Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California proposed more spending cuts for the state's public universities and recommended double-digit percentage increases in tuition in his first state budget plan, released this month.

The proposed cuts are part of the governor's plan to deal with a projected state budget deficit of $14-billion in the 2004-5 fiscal year.

Specifically, Mr. Schwarzenegger's budget would cut state funds for the University of California by 8 percent, or $372-million, and scale back spending on programs at California State University by 9 percent, or $240-million. Funds for the state's 108 public two-year institutions would increase by $211-million, or 4.4 percent.

Under the governor's plan, increases in tuition would make up for some of the cuts at universities and would increase the money available for community colleges. Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, proposed raising tuition for in-state undergraduates at the University of California and California State University systems by 10 percent in the 2004-5 academic year.

The jump in rates would be even greater for out-of-state undergraduates and graduate students in the two public-university systems. Mr. Schwarzenegger recommended increasing tuition by 20 percent for nonresidents in undergraduate programs and by up to 40 percent for graduate students.

At community colleges, the governor called for increasing rates by 44 percent, to $26 per credit hour. Tuition for students at two-year institutions who already hold bachelor's or higher degrees would increase even more, to $50 per credit hour, under Mr. Schwarzenegger's budget. All students now pay $18 per credit hour, which represented a 64-percent increase over the previous academic year.

Even as he urged tuition increases, Mr. Schwarzenegger called for a more predictable tuition policy, to limit the wide variance in rate increases over the state's good and bad economic times. For example, while in-state students at public universities saw a 30-percent jump in tuition rates at the beginning of the current academic year, students at California's public institutions during the economic boom of the late 1990s enjoyed a freeze, and then a 10-percent cut, in tuition rates.

Mr. Schwarzenegger said that tuition should not rise by more than 10 percent each year for California residents who are undergraduates at the state's public universities, and that the tuition rates should be tied to the rate of growth of per-capita personal income in the state.

"We must end the boom-and-bust cycle of widely fluctuating fees with a predictable, capped-fee policy for college students and their parents," the governor said during his State of the State address.

In his budget plan, the governor also proposed reducing the current requirement that universities set aside one-third of revenues from tuition increases for financial aid. Citing the state's budget crunch, Mr. Schwarzenegger is recommending that institutions instead devote only 20 percent to student aid, so that they could use more of the revenues to help absorb cuts in state funds.