In a freshman calculus class, 370 students watch professor David Leep write formulas on the overhead projector. In better budgetary times, a freshman calculus class had 25 or 30 students, the better to understand parabolas and intercepts.

The bulging class size has students frustrated.

"To come from a high school with 500 kids total to learn about a subject as hard as calculus in a situation like this is really difficult," said Daniel Cayse, a freshman from Villa Hills.

"These classes are impossible," said Jason Reynolds of Louisville.

Math officials say they are doing the best they can, but insist they don't have a choice.

"The ideal is to have small classes so students get attention they deserve," said Richard Carey, chairman of the math department. "It used to be 25 to 30 per section, but due to constraints on resources, multiple sections have been combined to meet at the same time and the same place."

The situation is similar across the university, which has lost $73 million in budget cuts in the past three years and recently welcomed a record freshman class of almost 4,000 students.

President Lee Todd says enrollment must continue to grow so that UK can join the ranks of the best public universities in the country.

Provost Mike Nietzel said tuition increases were meant to provide some relief. He budgeted $500,000 to add nine positions across the campus and used some money to renovate some labs and classrooms to provide more space for more sections.

Still, many worry about the long-term effects of less money and more students.

The College of Arts and Sciences, the largest college on campus, is considering how it will make cuts on top of the loss of 16 tenure-track professors and 15 teaching assistants in the past two years.

Classes like math and languages -which require more intensive instruction - are especially hard hit.

"Either the classes get bigger and education goes down, or there are not enough people to teach them," said Edward Stanton, chairman of Hispanic Studies. "It's happening a lot in Spanish; we cannot make our classes go beyond a certain point."

Upper-level classes, which need small sizes for conversation, have also been affected. Plus, it's harder to attract good graduate students if they think they'll have to teach huge sections.

"Students have been very understanding, but there's a build-up of frustration," Stanton said. "We have to tell people they have to give up Spanish and go on to another language."