Budget woes have forced the University of California to slam the door on more than half its transfer and freshman student applicants for the winter term, beginning in January, the university system announced Tuesday.

The decision will be especially hard on students trying to transfer from community colleges, who normally expect to be accepted at one of UC's campuses if they qualify -- a promise made in the state's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education.

In the past, almost all would-be freshmen and transfer applicants have been considered for admission. But this year, the system stopped considering applications when it reached the enrollment that its state funding would allow.

Making matters worse, students not considered by UC will have few places to turn -- the California State University system and community colleges are limiting admissions as well.

Community college officials say UC's move will strain their systems and may end up pushing some students out of higher education entirely.

"The impact will be terrible. These are students who are completely done with their lower-division requirements," said Lindy McKnight, department chair of the continuing students counseling department at City College of San Francisco. "It means they are basically going to have a semester when they are going to be twiddling their thumbs" or staying at community colleges taking classes they don't need.

LATEST BLOW TO STUDENTS

UC's action is the latest blow to California students as the state grapples with a devastating budget crisis. Seven of the 23 CSU campuses said this summer that they would not accept any new students at all for the winter and spring terms (another campus, the California Maritime Academy, takes students only in the fall). Most other CSU campuses have either closed their application periods or have had to increase admissions standards.

"There are not many options," said CSU spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler. "Most doors are closed, and if they are open, they are open with many restrictions."

And students deferred now will face more difficulties in the fall because greater numbers of applicants will compete for limited spaces. At a time when a tidal wave of students is coming of college age, both the UC and CSU systems have been told by the Legislature that they won't get funding for enrollment growth next year.

At the University of California, which has already raised student fees 30 percent in July in an effort to deal with a $410 million cut in state funding, officials said they had no choice but to limit the students they accepted in the winter. The system's net state-funded budget has fallen 13.6 percent since 2001-02, while overall enrollment has grown by 18 percent. Of the 2,663 winter applicants, 1,063 students will be considered, including 500 students who had transfer guarantee agreements. The other 1,500 transfers and 100 first-time freshmen will have their $40-per-campus application fees refunded.

"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 C. Atkinson said in a statement Tuesday. "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."

PACT MADE IN '97

UC has been working to increase community college transfers since 1997, when it signed a partnership agreement with the community colleges to increase enrollment by 6 percent each year. The number of students transferring to UC's eight undergraduate campuses has increased for five years in a row. About 15 percent of its transfers have generally been admitted in the winter, according to a news release.

If some of those who were planning to transfer now remain at the community college longer, they will further overcrowd the campuses, and students coming out of high school who planned to go to a community college may find no place to go. That will disproportionately have an impact on minorities, low-income students and those who are the first in their family to go to college, said Diablo Valley College President Mark Edelstein.

And the many community college students who are older, nontraditional students with families may not be able to afford to take a break in their education, Edelstein said, so they may drop out entirely.

"Inevitably," he said, "a lot of students are simply not going to have access to the B.A. degree that is promised to them in the Master Plan of Education of California."

UC spokeswoman Lavonne Luquis said that while the Master Plan does guarantee a place in the system for all eligible transfer students, the promise had "generally been interpreted as a guarantee for fall."

But that is not how it has been interpreted by those at community colleges.

"I'm not sure there is an iron-clad guarantee that there will be a place in every instance," said Thomas Nussbaum, chancellor of the 108 California community colleges, "but it certainly has been the practice."