Budget cuts will prevent about 20,000 freshmen and transfers into the California State University system from being admitted this school year, a system spokeswoman said Thursday.

At least 20 of the 23 campuses will limit the number of new Cal State students in the winter and spring terms. The locked-out students represent about two-thirds of the usual 30,000 mid-year transfers into the nation's largest public university system.

"These are very challenging times for the California State University," said Cal State spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow. "Having budget reductions and not having enrollment growth is changing the educational environment of California."

Every Cal State campus except Humboldt, Chico and Dominguez Hills will employ some combination of limits this year, she said.

Some colleges, such as Hayward, will not admit first-time freshmen in the spring. Some will prevent past graduates from seeking a second bachelor's degree; others will keep out community-college transfers.

At Hayward, the limits will prevent about 70 full-time freshmen from arriving at the campus this year, said school spokesman Kim Huggett. The university has nearly 14,000 students, but the number of rejected admissions is still scary, he said.

"To my knowledge, we have never denied admission to a fully qualified student before," Huggett said. "We have always been proud of the fact that, if you were qualified to get in, we could get you in."

Administrators and students say the restrictions, caused by severe higher-education cuts in this year's state budget, could have terrible consequences for the reeling California economy.

Some also fear the state's community colleges will bear the brunt of the Cal State limits, since many students who are unable to transfer will remain at junior colleges as new students arrive.

With very little funding available to community colleges, administrators are researching ways to reduce the negative effects of the admissions restrictions, said Kirsten Macintyre, a spokeswoman for California Community Colleges.

"There's not a whole lot we can do," she said. "The students are being terribly inconvenienced. It's a very frustrating situation."

James McMillan, a junior at Sonoma State in Rohnert Park, said Thursday the new limits don't make sense for state universities.

"We're trying to give anybody who deserves it a chance at an education, and now we're not letting them in," McMillan said. "It's not really what we're supposed to be doing for a public school."

The restrictions will not affect Chico State, which routinely limits enrollment anyway, said admissions director John Swiney. The school expects to admit about 1,000 more students to the 16,200-student campus in the spring.

With the eventual effects of the state budget deficit still in doubt, school administrators will need to employ a level of frugality never before needed, Swiney said.

"I think the colleges have been in a strong growth mode and weren't really in a position to react effectively to dampen down their enrollment, because they didn't have the mechanisms in place to do that," he said.

"They may have been caught off guard by the sudden (funding) shift in the state."