LOS ANGELES (AP) — Faculty representatives at the University of California, Los Angeles voted Thursday to take the school's masters of business administration program off state funding and make it financially self-supporting.

The Legislative Assembly of the UCLA Academic Senate approved the plan with a 53-46 vote, with three abstaining, university spokesman Phil Hampton said.

The plan makes the 745-student, full-time MBA program at the Anderson School of Management self-supporting through its $49,000 a year in-state tuition and philanthropic gifts.

The $8.8 million in state money that has previously funded the program would be directed to other uses on the campus, Hampton said.

That additional money would be a boon to the humanities and social sciences, said Andrew Leuchter, professor of psychiatry at UCLA and chairman of the Academic Senate.

"This allows us to better support programs that are less able to support themselves," Leuchter said.

And the move would allow greater freedom for the business school.

"It enables them to get better control over their ability to set tuition, and to marshal their resources to do innovative things with their curriculum," Leuchter said.

Anderson School of Management already has several other MBA programs that are self-supporting, but this would be the largest one, Hampton said.

He noted that other public universities, including the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia, also have self-supporting business programs.

The vote came after another faculty body representing graduate programs rejected the idea.

The proposal now needs the approval of the faculty Senate and president of the entire University of California system.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement he was "pleased" with the vote.

"The UCLA Anderson proposal would aid not only the professional school but the entire campus as we adjust to the loss of state funding," Block said.