Advocate Online

They're Talking On Campus. . .

. . .About testimony from the California Student Public Interest Research Group before Congress this summer that publishers jack up prices of textbooks by adding “bells and whistles” that professors and students don’t need or care about.

The student advocacy organization also charged that publishers frequently issue unnecessary new editions of textbooks.

The Government Accounting Office is investigating textbook prices, recognizing that these costs are yet another barrier to college access.

. . .About the myth that college students don’t vote in presidential elections. According to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), 87 percent of college students registered to vote in 2000, and 78 percent voted.

NAICU is part of a coalition, Your Vote, Your Voice: The National Campus Voter Project, working to get college students to the polls in this election as well.

The group has registered more than 3 million college students since 1996. For information, visit www.naicu.edu/VoteVoice2004/.

. . .About an Economic Policy Institute finding that investment in education spurs national economic development by increasing worker productivity, learned skills, and average earnings. Society benefits from faster growth, more jobs, and more widely shared prosperity, notes the report.

Smart Money: Education and Economic Development can be purchased online from the EPI at www.epinet.org/content.cfm/shop.