Chancellor Dan Klaich told the Interim Finance Committee on Thursday that a 22 percent budget cut would destroy the university system as it now is.
"We are in the process of unwinding a decade of progress," he said. "It's simply too much, too fast, too destructive."
Klaich told lawmakers that to cut $147 million this two-year budget cycle would greatly reduce access to education and cause damage he doubted could ever be reversed. The only way the system could absorb those cuts, he said, would be to close down campuses.
Klaich presented three scenarios:
• Shut down College of Southern Nevada and Nevada State College in Henderson;
• Close Great Basin College, Truckee Meadows Community College, the Desert Research Institute, the law school, dental school and medical school;
• Shut down Nevada State College, Great Basin, Truckee Meadows and Western Nevada College, UNR and UNLV athletics and the Agricultural Station.
These scenarios, Klaich said, would mean preventing 15,750 students from taking classes.
Making the cuts by pay reductions in 2011, he said, would require a 20 percent across the board pay cut or at least five furlough days a month or 1,290 layoffs.
Covering those cuts with student fees, he said, would mean a 50 percent increase in per credit charges. That would push undergraduate courses from $156 to $232 a credit.
He and college presidents who attended Thursday asked lawmakers to give them as much flexibility as possible rather than mandating specific reductions.
Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford and Sen. Bob Coffin, both D-Las Vegas, questioned reports that some system employees have escaped pay cuts or furloughs.
Western Nevada President Carole Lucey said all of her administrators took the 4.6 percent pay cuts. The tenured faculty all agreed to teach at least one additional course each semester to make up for positions she said have been held vacant for the past three years.
Lucey, like the others, asked for as much flexibility as possible in dealing with any shortfall the Legislature eventually imposes on the university system.
The hearing followed the release Wednesday of proposals by Gov. Jim Gibbons to cut $880 million from the budget for the biennium that ends June 30, 2011.
Those proposals include laying off 234 workers, closing the 140-year-old Nevada State Prison in Carson City and the Summit View Youth Correctional Center in Las Vegas.
The layoffs don't include potential teacher cuts or higher education staff.
But even if all the governor's recommendations were enacted, they'd cover less than half the anticipated funding gap, meaning more cuts or added revenues must be found.
Gibbons will detail the state's fiscal crisis and call a special session of the Legislature in a televised speech Monday night.
More hearings are scheduled in Las Vegas next week to review the potential impact of cuts on other parts of state government.
Once they have a plan, a special session will be set to implement it.
