Bracing for deeper budget cuts, higher education officials are considering a range of cost-saving measures at the state’s three public colleges — from eliminating dozens of small academic programs to consolidating some redundant programs to reducing the number of credits needed to earn a degree.

They also warn that increases in tuition and fees for next year will probably double. Students at the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and Community College of Rhode Island will most likely see increases of 20 percent to 25 percent, or even higher.

“We need to have an ongoing analysis of how we can reduce costs,” said Jack Warner, the state’s higher education commissioner. “We don’t hold out a lot of hope for an infusion of state money, because given the fiscal situation, it doesn’t seem to be there.”

The Board of Governors for Higher Education will vote whether to approve the changes to academic programs at a 5 p.m. meeting tomorrow at CCRI’s Warwick campus.

If approved, the board would begin reviewing small and duplicate programs and recommend cuts in April and May. Bachelor-degree programs that require more than 120 credits and associate-degree programs that require more than 60 credits will be reviewed for possible reduction of credits in June.

It would take a few years to see savings, Warner said, as programs would be phased out gradually to accommodate students currently enrolled.

About 40 small programs graduating 6 or fewer students a year have been eliminated in the past several years. Warner wants to increase the threshold to 11 or fewer students a year, a change that would target another dozen programs for possible elimination.

Consolidating duplicate programs could be trickier. For example, all three schools offer nursing, and both URI and RIC offer popular teacher-training programs. Warner said high volume, high-need courses, such as nursing and teaching, will most likely remain in place. But some smaller or mid-sized programs could be consolidated, although Warner declined to detail possible consolidations.

“These are efforts to achieve long-term structural savings,” Warner said. “We understand the need to downsize and restructure and be as lean as we can possibly be. We have a responsibility to do that because we are going to have to pass on a much higher price to students and families and we need to know we have cut as much as we can.”

This year, URI, RIC and CCRI lost about $30 million in state financing, forcing the institutions to hike tuition and fees beyond what they had originally intended. The colleges were counting on about $180 million from the state, but ended up receiving about $150 million. The bulk of higher education’s $850-million budget comes from tuition and fees from the roughly 40,000 students who attend the three colleges.

In January, tuition and fees will once again rise at the three schools by $200 to $250 per student because of more last-minute cuts by the state. In-state students at URI will pay $3,977 this spring, not counting room and board. At RIC, in-state students will pay $2,645, and at CCRI, students will pay $1,597.

The national recession, the state’s yawning budget deficit and Rhode Island’s highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate indicate there will be even less money to run the state colleges next year, Warner said. At this point, the colleges will be lucky to get $147 million from the state for the 2009-2010 academic year — an amount higher education officials referred to as “the worst-case scenario” back in September. With that level of financing, tuition and fees at the three colleges would spike by at least 20 percent to 25 percent. It would be the sharpest increase since the last significant recession and the state’s banking crisis in the early 1990s.

The Board of Governors will have to review its budget, including tuition and fee rates, after Governor Carcieri announces his state spending plan early next year.

“The nature of the crisis we are in means that even though the impact on higher education is not yet known, the trends are clear,” Warner said.

The proposed changes stop short of consolidating the state colleges, an idea briefly floated last spring by lawmakers. Warner said that combining URI and RIC would not save money in the end. Because of unions and other issues, salaries and other costs would rise if the two institutions were merged, he said.

Combining RIC and CCRI was also rejected by higher education officials, who pointed out that CCRI, which has open admissions and offers remedial English and math classes in addition to college courses, clearly has a different mission than a master’s degree granting institution such as RIC, Warner said.

jjordan@projo.com