One of the few Chico State University administrators who went through the budget cuts of the 1990s says as bad as things seem to be, the institution will survive.

George Wellman, Chico State's associate vice president for financial services, was the campus "budget officer in 1991, when the sate economy last came in for a crash landing.

Looking back over his 30 years on the Chico State campus, Wellman said budget contractions aren't terribly rare.

"I've been here since '73 and you can almost plot this. It seems like about every 10 years we go through something like this," he explained.

In the crisis that stretched into the mid-1990s, faculty left the campus and enrollment plummeted.

During the last shrinkage, classes and programs were cut, but no particular effort was made to limit enrollment.

The net result was students found they could get admitted to Chico State but they couldn't get the classes they need to move their degree programs forward.

He said that reality launched a word of mouth campaign that prompted students to go elsewhere, or worse-still, according to Wellman, some of the potential students just didn't continue their education at all.

"It is very easy for people to pick up on (the lack of class offerings) and get it circulated. It spreads," Wellman said. "In this information age, one of the best modes of communication is the informal network, word of mouth."

During the same period the number of faculty also slipped.

Wellman said a lot of the faculty fallout in the 1990s was as a result of a "golden handshake" incentive to retire that was passed into law then.

He said this time there are a "couple of bills" in the Legislature that would authorize another golden handshake.

"I have some doubts whether anything will pass, and if it passes, then I have doubts the California State University will implement it,"' said Wellman.

In the final analysis, according to the veteran administrator, the university will continue.

"We don't have any choice. We have to survive it. The only thing is figure out how to survive it with the least pain," he said.

However, the university, can capitalize on the changes the budget cuts will force, by making this a time to review where the school is headed, he said.

"It is also an opportunity to look inward and decide, in two or three or five years, when we come out of this, what do we want to look like," he said. "With cuts like we are talking about, we have to have the ability to manage the enrollment so it balances with the resources."

He conceded the university can get through the tight budget period just by hunkering down, but he didn't think that would be a wise approach.

"We shouldn't be casual. We shouldn't rest on our laurels and sit back and wait," said Wellman.