With that mission, California built its vast, tiered system of public higher education with a door that opened for high school graduates with the right grades.

Three distinct institutions -- the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges -- grew into 140 campuses statewide, where students could buy a first-rate education for little money.

Now, California's record budget crisis has state leaders backing off that pledge. Their decision to halt money for enrollment growth -- at least for next year and possibly beyond -- means that for the first time since the Master Plan for Higher Education took shape 43 years ago, California will not provide a slot for all students eligible for one of its four-year colleges.

Enrollment will be capped, and students will be turned away -- by the thousands.

"The promise of the master plan was so generous. Everybody could go," said Jane Wellman, senior associate with the Washington-based Institute for Higher Education Policy.

"Now, you have an explicit, out-front decision that wholesale revisions to the California promise are going to have to be made. I would say now that California is the anti-model."

By the plan, the top 12.5% of California's high school graduates are promised a seat at one of the nine UC campuses. The top third are guaranteed the same at CSU. For every other high school graduate, there would be a slot in the 108 community colleges, where students could spend two years, beef up their academic resumes and transfer to UC or CSU.

That was until California's public treasury began to dry up and the gap between spending and revenue ballooned to $38.2 billion this year.

Lawmakers looked for cuts in almost every public sector, and higher education took a heavy hit, with more than $700 million cut from the UC and CSU systems.

University officials say the cuts left them with little or no money to add new faculty and classes to accommodate the growing numbers of potential students.

For the first time in its history, CSU made a formal decision to turn away qualified students this year -- a move expected to keep out as many as 30,000 students across the 23-campus system, the nation's largest.

UC leaders likely will follow in the fall of 2004 with plans to freeze enrollment growth for freshmen, transfer students and graduate students. That decision would block entry for an estimated 5,000 eligible students.

"California has not rationed its higher education before," CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said. "Students who have not done as well in high school could suffer the most. We have given them a chance to work on their English and math here, but now we may have to tell them to do that at the community colleges and transfer to us later."

As the economy languishes, California high schools are churning out record numbers of graduates, prompting an enrollment boom at public colleges that educators call Tidal Wave II. Both CSU and UC grew 5% to 7% a year in the past several years and expect growth demands to remain at that level through 2010.

The Legislature, however, said the state would provide no money for growth next year. If California's economic fortunes don't turn around in two years, the enrollment freezes could persist.

"This is a serious mismatch of needs for students and the economic times," said Patrick Callan, president of the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "If you get several years of this in a row, students are going to stop believing in the promise. They will think it doesn't matter how hard you work, you could still be frozen out."

Budget shortfalls set records this year in many states, prompting lawmakers to carve deeply into public university budgets.

Higher education officials note that students have endured tuition increases and program cuts during other lean times. They cite the state's last budget crisis 10 years ago, when fees took a similar jump, and people adapted.

But this year is different for California because of what CSU's Reed calls the "double whammy."

"At the very time that California's economy and budget are shrinking, its need for higher education and demand for access is accelerating," Reed said. "It's a scary thing."