BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - Crystal Wuebker had it all planned out. Take community college classes near her home in Central California and complete her degree when the University of California's new Merced campus opened in fall 2004.

But it didn't work out that way thanks to a state budget crisis that has sucked more than $700 million out of California's public university funding, forcing the third fee hike this year at the University of California - and a one-year delay in opening UC Merced - and a major enrollment cutback at the California State University system.

"It's sad. Not what I wanted, course," said Wuebker.

The nearly $100 million budget passed by legislators this week attempts to solve a $38 billion deficit through deep cuts, a $4 billion annual car tax increase and the elimination of a tax break for manufacturers. The budget does not contain increased sales or income taxes and should trim the deficit to about $8 billion by next summer.

At CSU, which with 23 campuses and more than 400,000 students is the nation's largest public university system, officials are expecting more than $345 million in cuts to their state-funded budget of about $2.6 billion. Officials have already approved a fee increase of 30 percent, have cut a number of non-instructional programs and plan to halve enrollment growth for the next academic year, denying admission to as many as 30,000 students in the spring term.

CSU funding has "declined to a level at which quality will erode; adding more students to already inadequate funding will only exacerbate this problem," CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said in a statement reacting to the cuts.

CSU officials have raised fees to $2,046 a year, with additional fees bringing the undergraduate average to about $2,500.

At the nine-campus UC system, which has about 200,000 students and includes the well-known campuses of UC Berkeley and UCLA, officials are expecting cuts of about $410 million.

"I think we're in for two difficult years," UC President Richard C. Atkinson told members of the UC Academic Assembly Wednesday, where he was speaking in favor of a motion on academic freedom. Atkinson warned that the outlook for the next fiscal year isn't good either.

"This is an extremely difficult budget for the university," Atkinson said in his formal budget statement. "It is clear that the UC system will be taking major cuts that will greatly impact our ability to serve students and the state as a whole."

UC officials have already voted to raise student fees by 25 percent, giving Atkinson the option to go 5 percent higher if needed. Wednesday, UC announced it is exercising that option. That means will have gone up $1,150 this year, bringing the undergraduate average to about $5,500 when miscellaneous fees are added.

Some students have filed suits challenging the fees, saying they were made too fast.

UC administrators also are considering borrowing about $50 million.

Cuts are being made to all non-instructional programs, with one of the deepest slices going to outreach aimed at bringing disadvantaged students to UC, which has been a key issue since old affirmative action programs were dropped in 1995. Also taking hits are the Cooperative Extension public service branches and UC Merced, where $4 million was cut from the $11.3 million budget, effectively delaying the opening until 2005.

The delay affects about 1,000 students, among them Wuebker. She is among 120 students who are in an admissions program where they are concurrently enrolled at UC Merced and community colleges. Merced administrators hope to keep those students on track through online courses or classes at various area locations.

Wuebker was philosophical about the setback. "There's nothing I can do about it," she said. "I'm just trying to look for the future and make the best of the situation."

At UC Berkeley, among those affected by the cuts was John Shelly, a Cooperative Extension adviser for a forest products lab that lost about 15 positions.

Lab research includes improving the performance of various wood products and fire mitigation, especially finding a profitable use for brush cleared in that effort which might motivate property owners to clear more, an important issue in wildfire-prone California.

"Now we have to find new ways for doing that," said Shelly, an adviser in biomass utilization, "scrambling for more grant funds to hire people on a temporary basis to help us out or we won't be able to offer the same level of program that we did in the past."

CSU and UC officials pointed out that in addition to the cuts this year, the Legislature indicated it would not fund enrollment growth for the 2004-05 year.

"We have entered an entirely new budget environment," said Reed.