The University will cut into core academic programs and lay off more staff starting this year as it seeks to recover a budget deficit of more than $100 million, University President Richard Levin and Provost Peter Salovey announced in an e-mail to faculty and staff today.

Though last year’s budget reductions closed more than half of the original $350 million gap, Yale’s departments will have to cut more deeply this spring as they finalize their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. Last year’s cutbacks mostly hit entertainment and travel funds, but this year, everything from the salaries of top administrators to the number of graduate students will be adjusted to save money.

“We know we are asking you to make difficult choices and decisions, but we are optimistic that if we can achieve the reductions outlined here, we will have created a stable and sustainable budget for the University,” Levin and Salovey wrote in the memo.

In addition to adjusting salaries and benefits for Yale employees, the new budget policy calls for reducing the number of new Graduate School students by up to 15 percent, rolling back funding for research and outreach programs, and decreasing International Summer Award funds for students studying abroad.

Besides asking central units to slash expenses by 7.5 percent plus an additional proportion based on the availability of their own restricted endowment funds, Levin and Salovey said self-supporting professional schools and programs such as the Yale Center for British Art will receive 13.4 percent less endowment funding than before.

Departments will not be able to make these cuts without eliminating some staff positions, Levin and Salovey warned.

“We are, of course, hoping to keep staff reductions as low as possible, but some will be necessary,” they wrote.

Working with the Provost’s Office, deans, directors, department chairs and business managers will begin the process of preparing a 2010-’11 budget this week.

For more coverage, see tomorrow’s News.