Shifting the opening date of the University of California at Merced, as a Senate budget subcommittee considered this week, is not a strategic way to chip at a $38 billion state budget deficit. Although the panel discussed a postponement from fall 2004 to fall 2005, it took no formal action.
Good thing. The 10th University of California campus -- the first UC in the San Joaquin Valley -- will be an educational, economic and environmental engine for a region that long has trailed the rest of the state in financial and scholastic attainment.

The campus will create and spin off thousands of jobs, spurring economic opportunity for valley residents. It will educate thousands of students, many of them from underserved parts of the valley. And it will preserve thousands of acres of nearby wetlands and grasslands, sustaining a lush habitat landscape.

It adds up to a far-reaching, long-term investment that should not be compromised for quick savings. The legislative analyst's office said that delaying the campus for a year would save $1.85 million. That sum is dwarfed by the opportunity costs of stalling progress on a university that will bring so much educational, economic and environmental bounty.

That's not to say UC Merced should not share in the budget pain; there probably are programs, such as marketing and outreach, that can be shrunk or deferred to help the project participate in the statewide belt-cinching.

Yet the university itself, and its core curriculum, are too valuable to place on hold. In fact, it is projects such as these -- projects that teach skills and create jobs -- that help induce economic recovery. Legislators would best serve the public by moving the campus forward on schedule.