California community colleges are likely to bear the burden of 10,000 additional students this fall – students who can't get into the California State University system because it suddenly moved up its application deadline this week.

Community colleges, already reeling from the double whammy of projected enrollment growth and proposed budget cuts, will not shut their doors to students. But, under the governor's budget proposal, they're not going to be able to add more classes.

That means that as the community colleges swell with students who are pushed out of the state universities, community college students will have access to fewer classes. Students who want to carry a full load of 15 units might end up being able to register for only six, said Brice Harris, chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District.

"We want to be part of the solution, but we know that when the economy goes into the tank, people go back to college," Harris said. "So the place you want to invest is your community college."

In anticipation of drastic budget cuts next year, the California State University system wants to save money by shedding 10,000 students and laying off the non-tenured staff it would take to teach them. To reduce enrollment, it announced early this week that the application period for high school seniors and other first-time freshmen is shortening by about six months – from mid-August to Feb. 1. Late Wednesday, CSU announced it would extend the application deadline to March 1 for seven under-enrolled campuses, including Sacramento State.

The vast majority of students who apply to California State University campuses as high school seniors apply by the Nov. 30 "priority" deadline. But those who use the university's rolling admissions procedure now have just two weeks to apply, or six weeks in the case of Sacramento State.

"While we realize it's early in the budget process we have to manage our enrollment responsibly," said Claudia Keith, spokeswoman for the CSU chancellor's office.

"Our campuses have to be prepared. It's not easy to turn the spigot of students on and off. Many of our campuses admit students until the first week of class, but if we do not get funding for those students it would not be responsible for us to admit students we can't teach."

California's public colleges – from the prestigious UCs to the community colleges that take all comers – are worried about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to cut $1.1 billion from the state's higher education systems. In addition to the cuts, the governor's budget proposal calls for increasing student fees – by 7.4 percent at UC campuses and 10 percent at CSU schools.

Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said California consistently bungles its funding of the three public college systems, treating them as unrelated silos rather than inter-locking puzzle pieces.

"It requires a kind of thinking about the budget that California doesn't do very well, realizing there is a ripple effect in these things," he said.

The constricting of California's public universities comes as the number of college applicants is likely reaching an all-time high. The high school graduating classes of 2008 and 2009 are expected to be the largest the nation has ever seen, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

Enrollment at Sacramento-area colleges has grown in recent years as the children of baby boomers – the so-called "baby boomlet" – move through high school and into college. Los Rios schools – including American River, Cosumnes and Sacramento City colleges – are up 12 percent over last year. Enrollment at Sierra College in Rocklin is up by 9 percent.

Growth has been slower at Sacramento State, which enrolled 28,845 students this fall – up 300 from the previous year. Since the school fell short of its enrollment goal, Sacramento State would have been accepting students through the end of summer if CSU hadn't imposed the March 1 deadline this year.

The impact of the new deadlines will likely vary among the state's high school students. At Rio Americano High School in the affluent Arden area, most seniors applied to CSU schools by the Nov. 30 deadline, said Christine Brownfield, a college counselor at the school.

"In terms of the number of students of ours who would miss out, I would say it would be negligible," she said of the Feb. 1 cut-off.

But at schools in poorer areas, students are more likely to use the rolling admissions process that has now been cut short, said Callan, the higher education researcher.

"Changing the rules is likely to hurt the students who are least advantaged," he said. "Even if they're qualified, at the schools they go to the counseling usually isn't adequate and they might find out too late."