As many as 90,000 students have dropped out of or failed to enroll in California community colleges because of cost-saving class cutbacks, a new report concluded.

The study, released Tuesday, was an assessment of the state's 108 two-year colleges. The report found that enrollment declined to 1.69 million students last spring, down nearly 40,000 from the previous year.

Solano Community College (SCC) officials said declining enrollment is not a problem at their campus.

"Our enrollment is very stable," said Jim Bracy, SCC's vice president. "Summer (enrollment) was up and (also) fall, when the adds and drops are calculated, may be up a half percent."

The California Community Colleges chancellor's office found that students face "an enormous threat to access," said Vice Chancellor Patrick Perry, the report's author.

Education officials said the trend could continue this year because of new fee hikes and potential class reductions because of budget cutbacks.

"What's the alternative?" said Willard Wright, SCC's vice president of administration and business services.

Wright said even with the $7 per unit fee increase, community colleges are still a bargain compared to tuition at the University of California and state universities.

About 25 percent of SCC's 11,200 students enrolled this fall take 12 units or more, which means they'll pay an added $84 this semester, said Gerry Fisher, dean of admissions and records.

The college sent letters to students this summer informing them of the potential increase based on the passage of the state budget, Fisher said.

SCC students who pre-registered were given until Nov. 15 to pay the additional fees, whereas some colleges implemented the fee increase the day after the state budget was enacted, Fisher said.

In the study, Perry estimated that an added 50,000 students who normally would have enrolled for classes stayed away.

He also found that the average class size was 28 students, up from 27 in 2002.

SCC class size also increased slightly this fall, Bracy said.

"We have asked faculty to take a couple extra (students) in each class," he said.

The state's community colleges offered 164,597 classes in the spring term, down 4.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the report.

Amber Bruckner, 17, scrapped her plans to enroll at Solano Community College this fall when she realized the classes she wanted had been dropped. She plans instead to keep her job at Mel's Roast in Vallejo and postpone college for at least a semester to "see if it gets any better."

"I noticed the selection of classes did not compare to what it was a year ago," Bruckner said. "The language classes used to have more selection, there's not as good of a selection of English classes and they used to have more art classes. I noticed they took German off and a mixed painting class. They just cut so much."

SCC cut about 6 percent of course sections this fall, Fisher said. Rather than eliminating a department, the college reduced the number of courses that were not as popular, he said.

"We're pretty stable in every discipline," Bracy said. "We're in pretty good shape."

The report was reviewed at a Sacramento study session organized by the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

- The Associated Press contributed to this article