SAN MARCOS ---- The governor unveils his budget this morning amid fears in higher education circles that he will seek to raise fees and at the same time cut financial aid and other support to hard-pressed students.

Anxiety levels are high, especially over the fate of the educational opportunity program that helps low-income students get to college and become the first in their families to earn a degree. Given the signs so far, said Cal State San Marcos spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler, "it looks foreboding."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last month he would cut the program in half during the current year as part of some $23.7 million in spending reductions for the California State University system.

California State University Chancellor Charles B. Reed resisted. Rather than cut aid to the financially strapped, he said, CSU would allow 5,000 fewer students in the door than planned.

At CSUSM, the program each semester serves some 500 students, some so poor "they can't even afford to buy a book," said Lorena Meza, the college's director of student support services and the educational opportunity program, or EOP.

"They're trying to get out of the ghetto, if you will," Meza said. "EOP provides the main access for students to the university. And we're not talking about students of color. We're talking about students who are poor."

In other developments, the Los Angeles Times, citing sources close to the budget process, reported Thursday that undergraduates at both CSU and the University of California could see a 10 percent increase in their basic fee next year, and graduate students could see a hike of as much as 40 percent.

And at the California Student Aid Commission, officials said the governor's proposal may tighten the requirements for Cal Grants, one of the state's main programs for financial aid. Now, students are eligible if the income for a family of four is no greater than $66,700.

The educational opportunity program for the poor provides grants at CSUSM of $400 to $500 each semester to students with personal incomes of $9,900 or less, or those from families of four that earn less than $38,300 a year. CSUSM awards some $224,000 each year to these students. The program also provides for special academic advising, tutoring and personal counseling.

Meza said the program at CSUSM clearly proves it worth. Educational opportunity students on the campus stay in school and graduate at a far higher rate than students there as a whole, she said, adding, "What we're doing works."

Though the chancellor's action may have staved off cuts in the program for the coming semester, many are bracing for another assault today.

According to Luis Patino, a spokesman for state Sen. Richard Alarcon, a Democrat from the San Fernando Valley Van Nuys, the 2004-05 budget will call for "a complete eradication" of the program. Educational opportunity would perish along with the overall outreach programs of both the CSU and the University of California, Patino said in an interview Thursday.

Along with the midyear cuts, the 2004-05 proposal would save some $100 million over the next 17 months in the effort to close an estimated $15 billion state budget gap without raising taxes. The cost to the educational opportunity, or EOP programs, could be $37 million in 2004-05.

Alarcon was among the legislators at a hearing in Sacramento this week, where some 300 people protested cuts in the programs. At a news conference before the hearing, lawmakers from the Latino, African-American and Asian-Pacific Islander caucuses pledged to protect the programs.

Also at the hearing was Eric Roper, a vice president of Associated Students Inc. at CSUSM and a member of the student government body's lobby corps.

"I would ask that people contact their legislators and express that higher education is the vehicle that propels California's economy," he said Thursday. "Please tell Gov. Schwarzenegger that I don't think it's possible for him to be the education governor and cut education."