Mar 3, 2008 6:06 pm US/Mountain
Students Rally For Cheaper Books, Higher Education
DENVER (CBS4) ―
College students from across Colorado rallied at the State Capitol Monday pushing for more money for higher education and cheaper textbooks.
The students hope to change the way lawmakers think about higher education. They come to the Capitol every session, and they come from colleges all over the state. They believe if lawmakers actually hear their concerns face to face, it helps when legislators go into committee and actually vote on education issues.
The students want lawmakers to help on all sorts of issues, including what many of them say are the outrageous cost of their textbooks.
"Now we're paying between $150 and $300, $500 for a single textbook," said Shawn Olsen, a student at Pikes Peak Community College.
They support a bill that requires publishers, among other things, do not add to the textbooks the CD-ROMs and workbooks the students don't need, a standard price-boosting practice known as "bundling."
"We're buying materials that we don't need, don't use and are probably not beneficial for your class," said Aprill Nelson, a student at the Colorado School of Mines.
The students also used their visit to support Gov. Ritter's call for an 8.1 percent increase in higher education funding.
"This lack of funding is hurting our universities. Our class sizes are getting larger," Blake Gibson with Associate Students of Colorado said. "Classes are increasingly taught by adjunct professors, not full-time faculty."
"Colorado is ranked 48th in the nation for funding for higher education and we really need the money," Olsen said. "Right now, we're over $800 million short of the median of the national average."
Gibson said the lawmakers listened and showed support for their cause.
"Not only did they talk to us and listen to us, they showed just overwhelming support for higher education," Gibson said. "This is probably the easiest issue in the State Capitol to talk about. Everybody understands that we're underfunded; most people have children wanting to go to college. Whether that support will be realized in the funding is always the trick."
The first test of how successful their lobbying efforts were will likely come Thursday when there is a committee hearing on the textbook affordability issue.
Some students said they were disappointed they didn't get more one-on-one time with lawmakers, but said they understood the legislators are pretty busy.
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