Eliminating college-prep advice, tutoring and counseling for poor and minority students will cost a generation of children access to higher education and saddle the state economy with unskilled workers, local activists said yesterday.

Black and Latino leaders held a news conference on the campus of Memorial Academy Charter School in south San Diego's Memorial neighborhood to criticize Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts, including $85 million for college and university outreach programs. The Educational Opportunity Program and other services target low-income students, who typically are blacks and Latinos.

The affected programs offer tutoring, counseling and planning for students. Some of the services are for students who are already in college. One University of California program, which could be cut by $33.3 million, would eliminate outreach to high school campuses to prepare students for admission to UC schools.

The supporters of such programs say they raise the rates of student transfers from community college to state universities and university graduation rates. That 55 percent of all public high school seniors admitted to UC schools come from just 20 percent of the state's high schools proves the need for continued outreach, the activists said.

The activists didn't suggest alternative cuts but suggested that outreach programs pay for themselves by producing university graduates who earn high wages and therefore pay more taxes.

"We're not talking about one or two programs. We're talking about the future of California," said Gus Chavez, the retired Educational Opportunity Program director at San Diego State University.