Last week, California State University at Long Beach denied admission to 13,000 applicants fully qualified to enter as freshmen this fall.

That's not a misprint. And since everything but the rising of the sun happens first in California, Maryland policy-makers had better be paying attention.

For four decades California guaranteed admission at the University of California -- schools like Berkeley and UCLA -- to the top eighth of the state's high school graduates, while the top third were guaranteed admission to the second-tier Cal State system.

This fall, however, freshman classes in both systems will be cut by 10 percent in a severe budget crisis. Some students will be guaranteed admission in two years, but there's a hitch: They'll have to attend two years of community college first, at state expense.

All of this comes on top of fee increases -- "tuition" is a forbidden word in California -- of about 40 percent since December 2002.

Many Californians worry that their higher-education system, envied around the world, will slip into mediocrity if it has to bear the brunt of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget-cutting.