AUGUSTA -- Students at Maine's universities will start feeling budget cuts in a big way during the spring semester, the state's university system chancellor said Tuesday.

State lawmakers are asking the 45,000-student University of Maine System to cut $15 million from its budget this academic year and next. That might require the seven-campus network to cut the equivalent of 100 full-time positions, Chancellor Richard Pattenaude told members of the Legislature's Education Committee.

Pattenaude was addressing the legislative panel along with Maine Community College System President John Fitzsimmons and Maine Maritime Academy Vice President Richard Ericson.

With 100 full-time positions to cut, Pattenaude said, it's all but inevitable that some teaching positions will be eliminated.

"If we eliminate a significant number of faculty ... we suspect that we will cancel over 100 classes in the spring," he said.

That would leave 2,000 fewer class seats.

"When we see a significant cut, we have to turn to people," Pattenaude said. "It has a big impact on our instructional capacity."

Fitzsimmons said Maine's seven community colleges, which face $4.2 million in cuts this academic year and next, will "absorb the hits" this year without making major changes.

"We can absorb now, but fiscal year 2011 is when we touch all the students," he said.

State budget cuts mean that community colleges, whose enrollment has grown 42 percent since 2003, will lose some of their capacity to educate their 16,500 students. Enrollment growth is largely due to unemployed workers returning to school for retraining.

The effect, Fitzsimmons said, could be the loss of 300 to 500 student spots. The community college system, he said, would likely need to cut 25 positions.

Both Pattenaude and Fitzsimmons told lawmakers they'd try to shield high-demand programs, such as nursing, from major cuts.

The need to pare back budgets comes as the University of Maine System prepares a major restructuring in an attempt to close an annual deficit that's likely to grow to $43 million by the fall of 2012.

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com