Citing deep budget cuts, University of California officials announced Tuesday they won't be able to consider applications from about 1,500 community college students and 100 freshmen who applied for winter admission.

"We have tried to find other ways of coping with the budget cuts, but we have reached a point where the educational experience at the University of California will be severely compromised if we continue to grow without funding to support new students," UC President Richard Atkinson said in a statement. "We know our applicants have worked very hard to be eligible to attend UC, and they deserve to attend UC. We deeply regret having to delay their plans."

Campuses will still consider applications from 500 community college students who have guaranteed transfer agreements with seven campuses: Davis, San Diego, Irvine, Riverside, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. UC Berkeley did not accept any winter applications.

Officials said they will refund the $40 application fee paid by affected students. Refunds should arrive within the next three or four weeks and will be provided to 848 applicants at Riverside; 710 applicants at Irvine; 687 applicants at Santa Cruz; and 574 applicants at Santa Barbara. Some students apply to multiple campuses.

Applicants are encouraged to reapply in the fall.

Thomas Nussbaum, chancellor of California Community Colleges, said UC's announcement was disappointing, but he felt officials had few choices.

"We've made very good progress with UC in terms of increasing the number of trans-fers," he said, "Under normal years, and if we had decent funding, I'm sure they would consider a number of those (winter applicants). But you have to understand, they're not being funded for all the access they're providing, so they have to make some tough decisions."

This fall, UC admitted14,665 community college tran-sfer students -- a 7.6 percent increase from last year.

UC's announcement Tuesday was just a glimpse of further enrollment limits that will hit UC's nine campuses next year. The state budget adopted in July passed along $410 million in cuts to UC this year, and state legislators warned that next year's budget won't contain any additional money for enrollment growth.

UC officials said they've already accepted all the students they've been funded for this year, and, absent more funding next year, they'll have to consider several options for limiting enrollment. One option includes freezing enrollment at this year's level, despite increasing numbers of new students seek-ing admission. UC's governing board will consider options for restricting enrollments at meetings later this month, as well as into the new year.

California's other major pub-lic university system, California State University, has also restricted enrollment this year. Several campuses are not accepting any new applications for the remainder of the year, while others have closed enrollment to lower-division transfer students, among others.

Nussbaum said higher education in California is in a crisis and is threatening to break a promise to provide college access to all qualified students.

Nussbaum said he doesn't know what will happen to community college students who have completed all their lower-division requirements and are prepared to transfer into a UC or CSU school but are now told there's no space.