The UC will not shut down any of its campuses in an attempt to bridge a state-driven budget gap.

That’s the word from UC President Mark Yudof after a group of UC San Diego professors last week caused a stir by urging the UC close its campuses in Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz, according to The Associated Press.

The professors, chairs of 23 departments at UC San Diego, charged that those campuses were burdens on what they called the 10-campus system’s flagship institutions — UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego. UC Davis was not mentioned.

Written by sociology professor Andrew Scull, the letter singles out the UC’s newest campus in Merced, above all, for closure.

“We have suffered more than a 30 per-cent cut in our funding from the state, and we can thus no longer afford to be a 10 campus system — only a nine, or an eight (and a half) campus system,” he wrote.

Yudof, in a statement to the Merced Sun-Star newspaper, said, “I am 100 percent behind Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz, and do not see the call to reduce expenditures on those campuses, beyond their proportionate share of the systemwide deficit, as a solution to our budgetary ills.”

The professors’ letter was sent to leaders at the UC San Diego campus and the UC Office of the President. In other news, the regents were due to vote this week on a systemwide fiscal crisis plan.