Lee Gardner for The Chronicle of Higher Education on the latest survey of the California Community Colleges system:

More than 472,000 of the 2.4 million students in the California Community Colleges system were put on waiting lists for classes this fall

While 472,000 students seems like a very large number of students on the waiting list (and it is in real numbers) it is still less then 20% of all community college students.

But what is more concerning:

[California Community College] open-enrollment system served 2.4 million students in 2011-2012, down from 2.89 million students in 2008-9

Over 400,000 students disappeared from the California community colleges during one of the worse economic recessions of the current college-going age when it would be expected that more students would be incentivized to stay in or go to college.

That is rationing, in an open-enrollment system, by any name.