BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Colleges in Louisiana’s largest university system have frozen equipment and supply purchases, reduced travel and cut back on overtime to cope with $33 million in expected budget cuts this year.The schools in the University of Louisiana System also are considering consolidating classes next semester, cutting programs and shrinking staff, system President Randy Moffett said Thursday.”The presidents are committed to maintain the academic cores of their institution,” Moffett said of the leaders of the eight UL System universities, which have 80,000 students.The executive committee of the UL System board on Thursday voted to give campus presidents the ability to cut staff and programs to balance their budgets. Moffett said the presidents haven’t yet talked about layoffs, though he said they are considering shortening work weeks and reducing employees’ hours on some campuses.Louisiana has a $341 million deficit in its state budget this year, largely due to the sharp drop in oil and gas prices that have forced down royalty, severance and other tax payments the state receives for drilling on its lands and in its waters. The fiscal year ends June 30.Though Gov. Bobby Jindal and lawmakers haven’t set a final plan for cuts to balance the budget, higher education leaders said they have been told to expect $109 million of the cuts to fall on them. Moffett said the UL campuses’ share would be $33 million.The University of Louisiana system institutions are Grambling State and Louisiana Tech in Lincoln Parish; McNeese State in Lake Charles; Northwestern State in Natchitoches; Nicholls State in Thibodaux; Southeastern Louisiana in Hammond; the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of Louisiana at Monroe.Meanwhile, the governing board of the Southern University System agreed Thursday to a preliminary $7 million budget cutting plan that includes a partial hiring freeze, travel cuts, increased class sizes, consolidated summer school sessions and layoffs of temporary and part-time faculty and staff.”We are all taken by surprise at the magnitude of the reductions in our budgets, but nonetheless, we must begin the difficult process of identifying where the reductions can be made,” Southern System President Ralph Slaughter said in a statement.