The last time University of Rhode Island officials faced a financial situation this dire was in 1992 as the state was battling through the credit-union crisis and a national recession.

Now URI officials say they are forced to consider raising tuition and fees at the mid-year mark in January.

It is one of several options being weighed as the university and the state’s two other public colleges deal with the impact of soaring energy costs and additional state budget cuts that officials learned of last month.

URI is also discussing scaling back to a four-day academic week in the spring semester, closing the campus for two weeks over the winter break and stepping up efforts to attract and retain students.

“It’s truly a difficult time,” said Robert A. Weygand, URI’s vice president of administration and finance. “We are asking people to do more with less. How do we reduce our expenses and maintain the quality of our programs? How do we enhance our revenues?”

Some of the measures would have to be approved by the Board of Governors for Higher Education. But Weygand said there are no immediate plans to present a proposal to the board.

Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island may be forced to take similar actions, said Higher Education Commissioner Jack Warner, even though those schools made last-minute tuition and fee hikes in June.

URI was spared the last-minute increases then because the university is expanding its freshman class and the additional students were expected to keep the university’s revenues in the black.

“We had already planned on $17.8 million in cuts systemwide, and that’s what [RIC’s and CCRI’s] tuition adjustments were based on — the impact of that number,” Warner said. “But since July 1, we found we had to absorb another $13.3 million in cuts.”

The latest cuts come from several sources: personnel savings the Department of Administration is demanding from each state agency, an increase in the fee the state charges the colleges for benefits such as accrued sick leave, and $1.2 million as part of a one-day furlough program.

“I believe RIC is facing a $3.1-million cut, and at CCRI, they have to adjust by $4 million,” Warner said. “All of our institutions are holding positions vacant and reorganizing.” It is unclear what measures those colleges might take, Warner said.

Raising tuition and fees for the spring semester at any of the state colleges should be a last resort, Warner said.

“We’ll have to see what the analyses of these impacts will be, but I would consider a mid-year adjustment in charges a very drastic action,” Warner said. “Things would have to be very bad indeed before we would consider that.”

AT URI, the state budget cuts for fiscal 2009 — $12 million of the $17.8 million cut to higher education — precipitated a higher-than-average number of retirees this spring. About 180 URI employees have retired so far, 80 of them professors and staff who took advantage of an early-retirement bonus. URI also laid off some part-time instructors and the directors of two cultural programs. Four sports programs were eliminated. A hiring freeze was placed on most vacant positions. Administrators warned that many classes would be bigger this fall.

By mid-July, the situation became even bleaker. URI learned its share of personnel cuts, the furlough and the increase in benefit fees totaled more than $5 million. National Grid told the university that electricity and natural-gas costs will increase by at least $1.3 million in the coming academic year. Some of these costs will be offset by a large freshman class, about 3,200 students, which will net the university an additional $700,000 in tuition and fees.

But URI will have to take swift action to make up the rest of the shortfall, URI President Robert L. Carothers said in an e-mail to the university community July 31. He warned that more deep cuts were likely, on top of the earlier $12 million URI lost in state funding.

“These changes require us to reduce expenses and increase revenue by $5.7 million,” Carothers wrote. “Given the still-deteriorating Rhode Island economy, it is likely there will be another reduction in appropriations at mid-year.”

Anticipating tougher times ahead, Carothers outlined three possible ways to generate more money. One would be to attract more than the 150 to 220 transfer students admitted each spring, although details on how this would be done were not mentioned. Another is to work harder to retain current students.

Perhaps most controversial was: asking “the Board of Governors to approve a tuition increase effective in January, or, alternatively, a surcharge for the second semester,” Carothers wrote, adding that an amount had not been established.

Weygand said URI has not hiked tuition and fees midyear since 1992, when the state was mired in recession and the fallout from the banking crisis.

“We are not planning on asking [the Board of Governors for Higher Education] right now, but we might ask them shortly,” Weygand said. “At this point, nothing is finalized.”

Weygand said the university is already looking for ways to save money. This summer, some employees were offered flex-time, enabling them to work four 10-hour days. Weygand said top administrators are discussing closing the campus for a week or two over the winter break and perhaps moving to a four-day week in the spring semester. It’s too late to consider that change for the fall, he said.

“We are trying to figure out what kinds of savings we could derive out of that,” Weygand said.

At least one division of the university is coming up with its own ways to save — without cutting jobs.

The Coastal Resources Center, a research center at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, faced a $114,000 cut for the 2008-09 academic year. URI typically gives the center $300,000 to $400,000 a year; the rest of the center’s $3.5-million budget comes from federal grants and donations from private foundations.

Rather than lay off one or two members of the center’s team of four, the employees offered to forfeit 20 percent of their pay.

Director Stephen Olsen said no one wanted to break up the team of marine biologists, oceanographers and program managers that oversees coastal management programs around the globe. Projects include helping countries mitigate the effects of marine-habitat loss, over-fishing, climate change and tsunamis.

jjordan@projo.com