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The UC system's incoming president, Mark Yudof, says he intends to push more authority to the 10 campuses and deal with the university's missteps quickly and openly.

"You've got to build a level of public trust and support to get you over the crisis," he said.

His comments came during a half-hour telephone news conference on April 29 with correspondents from Dateline and other UC campus news outlets.

He spoke from the Office of the President in Oakland, between appointments during a visit connected with his transition to the UC presidency. And, speaking of the Oakland office, Yudof said, his first priority when he takes over June 16 "is to get some things done in the Office of the President."

"I really feel I have to get the trains running on time," said Yudof, who is coming to UC after serving as president of the University of Texas for almost six years. One of those "trains" is the budget, a victim of state government's bleak financial outlook. Also, the UC Office of the President is "clearly ... overstaffed," he said.

"The real action is on the campuses," Yudof said. "Are we (the Office of the President) part of the problem or part of the solution?"

Even before Yudof's arrival, the Office of the President is looking to cut its annual spending 20 percent and its work force 23 percent, under a proposal that went to the Board of Regents in March.

Yudof, in his interview with UC editors, said money saved in Oakland will go to the campuses, for such things as competitive faculty salaries and financial aid.

The campuses can use all the help they can get. Davis, for example, has set a target of $17.7 million in permanent funding reductions and may need two times that amount in one-time reductions to close the campus's 2008-09 budget gap.

The UC system as a whole is dealing with a $417 million shortfall in the university's $18.1 billion operating budget.

The biggest factor in the red ink is Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal, detailed in his draft budget in January, to cut UC funding by $332 million.

But that spending plan was only the beginning. Much can happen between January and the governor's budget revision in May -- and indeed there are reports that the state deficit has grown to $20 billion.

The budget revision is due out May 14, after which the real wrangling will begin between lawmakers and the governor.

The UC president-designee said his long-term goal is to convince Schwarzenegger, lawmakers and everyone else that when you take a dollar from UC, "it hurts the whole body politic."

Yudof confronted a budget challenge in Texas when he took over the UT system in 2002. "There are no silver bullets," he said, and no solution is painless.

Texas raised tuition, after Yudof helped persuade the state Legislature to give up its tuition-setting power. (In California, the UC Board of Regents already controls student fees -- and the board is considering 10 percent increases in educational and registration fees for 2008-09.)

The University of Texas system -- with nine academic campuses and six health institutions -- is more decentralized than California's, Yudof said. So, there was "some pruning" at the system level; the campuses took steps of their own, like increasing the student-faculty ratio, he said.

Yudof said he had met with Schwarzenegger, and, in fact, had smoked cigars with him and his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, in the governor's smoking tent outside the Capitol. Yudof said he was impressed when Schwarzenegger "almost lectured me on the value of higher education."

The incoming president said he did not want to "ruin" their first meeting by going into "the gory details" of UC finances, but came away feeling that Schwarzenegger "gets it" -- meaning that he believes in the fundamental importance of education, that it is not just "a consumption good."

Yudof sounded pessimistic, though, about higher education's standing with lawmakers in general. He voiced a similar sentiment in 2002 in an essay in Change magazine, writing about higher education's getting less and less from state budgets. He wrote at the time:

"The central implication is that, for the foreseeable future, public research universities will look to students to pay more of their educational costs.

"These students will be part of what I have dubbed the hybrid university, an institution with many traditions and functions still within the public realm, but with other characteristics that are more in line with those of private colleges and universities.

"The challenge for these hybrid institutions will be to retain the best of their public traditions while adapting to a more privatized model."

During his interview with UC editors, Yudof said that unfortunately, "Nothing has changed (since the article appeared in 2002) to show that state legislatures have stepped up to the plate."

As student fees go up, Yudof said, "We have to think very creatively about how we maintain access."

Here is a sampling of Yudof's comments on other issues:

• On Assembly Bill 2699, under consideration, for the protection of university animal researchers -- He said he was not familiar with the legislation, but noted: "I am not happy when our researchers feel that their lives are being threatened."

• On a centralized vs. a decentralized system -- UC's centralization may have been appropriate in the early days of the state's Master Plan for Higher Education, adopted in 1960 and ushering in UC's robust growth, but may be unworkable now. Today, a campus may wait as long as three months to get the Office of the President to sign off on a vice chancellor appointment: "I think that needs to be improved."

• On flagship campuses -- Dateline asked Yudof to identify the UC system's "flagship" campuses, how he proposed to strengthen them and what that might mean for the other UC schools. He reminded in a good-natured way that he was "a Philadelphia lawyer" who could "weasel out" of the question or take the Fifth Amendment.

He noted, though, that six of UC's nine general education campuses are members of the Association of American Universities, "the premier group of universities in America." Davis is one of them, a member since 1996.

• On UC's playing defense in the wake of public controversy -- If something embarrassing happens, "Go on the offensive to get the bad news out there (quickly) ... and fix it."

• On tree-sitters -- "Being a lawyer, my feeling is you enforce the law." But the constitutional scholar and expert on freedom of expression and education law also noted his commitment to free discourse. Still, he added, "I don't understand the property rights of tree-sitters."

• On bringing University of Texas staff with him, and in what positions -- "Texans are funny creatures — they like living in Texas and it's very hard to move them. There may be a couple but I doubt it — not very many. That's a prediction, not a promise."

• On visiting the UC campuses -- "Probably not before I start." But it will be "fairly early on."