High Gas Prices Pinch California College Students' Budgets

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Across the country, record high gas prices have put a dent in the pocketbooks of nearly everyone.

Perhaps no group has been harder hit, however, than the more than 3 million students enrolled at California's colleges and universities.

With limited public transportation, even in the state's largest cities, and campus housing available to fewer than a third, more and more students report they are resorting to increasingly innovative ways to save gas money.

Irma Gorrocino of California State University, Northridge, for example, has taken to crashing free catered food events at her Los Angeles campus.

In Northern California, officials at the hilly University of California, Santa Cruz, have begun hauling students and their bicycles to class in vans and trailers. The students ride back downhill to get home.

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