In baseball, a batter who hits successfully three times out of 10 will be an all-star, a football quarterback with a 65 percent completion percentage will go to the Hall of Fame, but Chico State University officials have a target they must hit precisely and any deviation will be punished.

Chico State President Paul J. Zingg told a Tuesday meeting of a campus budget committee the university is under absolute orders to hit its enrollment target for next fall right on the money.

The school, like the other 22 California State University campuses, gets its state funding based on enrollment. In the past if the individual campus hit within a 4 percent range 2 percent above or below the target the school got full funding. Not this fall. The campus must be no more than one-half percent high or low, or it risks losing funding for any excess students.

Zingg said for fall, Chico State has an enrollment target of 13,914 full-time equivalent students (FTE). The full-time equivalent student is an accounting tool that figures how many students there would be on campus if everyone who is enrolled took a full load of classes, which is defined as 15 units a semester.

The campus target translates to an enrollment cut of about 3.5 percent, according to the president, and that means somewhere between roughly 390 and 450 fewer individuals coming to campus.

"The leeway in achieving this (the target) is nonexistent. It's a joke, 1 percent," said Zingg.

The president also said, given the range of variables that go into whether any individual goes to college, he is not convinced it is possible to hit the goal.

Having said he thinks hitting the target that precisely is all but impossible, Zingg said, "Failure to do that will lead to an absolute cut in state funding."

The last thing anybody at Chico State wants to consider is the possibility of additional cuts.

Scot McNall, Chico State's provost and vice president for academic affairs, said the campus has known since at least December to anticipate a budget cut of "a little over $9 million," or roughly a 10 percent reduction.

While the overall enrollment will be slipping, McNall said the university expects to see the population of freshman climb by just under 400 individuals.

The projected cuts are similar to what the campus experienced for the current fiscal year. When planning for this year, Chico State officials decided to protect the teaching staff as much as possible. As a result, funds for teaching were cut by 5.4 percent, while the non-teaching aspects of the campus faced a 10.8 percent cut.

During Tuesday's budget meeting nobody said the cuts would follow the same pattern, but Zingg did say that is one scenario to be considered.

He did say, "Student learning is the heart of the matter. That's what we are all about," so finding ways to protect that aspect of the campus will take precedence.

McNall said the various colleges and departments at Chico State will be the ones that decide how to reach the enrollment targets and will have to make recommendations on how and where to make cuts.

Zingg urged the campus leaders at the meeting not to spend any time hoping for a miracle.

"We continue to wait for some magic moment when it (the budget) won't be as bad as it seems," said the president.

"There is an old saying that delay is the cruelest form of denial," said Zingg.

He advised his colleagues that waiting to make hard decisions would be the wrong thing to do.

"We don't have any room to get to May, June, or July, and face only a pro rata cut across the board. If you get to that point you have lost control of both your present and your future," said Zingg.