Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry cautioned students about rising tuition prices during a conference call with college journalists Tuesday.

Kerry said he believes the almost 28 percent rise in tuition nationwide is “unconscionable” and attributed it to the Bush tax cuts. Kerry said about 220,000 people had been priced out of a college education because of cuts to state budgets and federal grants.

This week kicks off Kerry’s chain of visits to college campuses in an attempt to drum up student support.

Kerry said he wanted students to be aware of the affect they could have on the election.

“We want students to begin to recognize their power in deciding this election,” he said. “Young people have this enormous power, and they have to understand it, embrace it and go out there and use it.”

Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science, said recent events such as the Sept. 11 investigation and violence in Iraq made this the wrong time to speak about the rising costs of tuition.

“Nobody in the United States is interested in that right now,” Schmidt said. “It’s really a bad use of his time.”

Schmidt said Kerry needs to be showing leadership skills at the current time.

“I find it very odd that he’s off doing the college thing when the country is in such an anxiety about Iraq and more generally, terrorism,” he said. “You can’t get elected president hanging around college campuses.”

Kerry made no mention of Iraq or the Sept. 11 commission during the conference call, concentrating mainly on the upcoming election.

Kerry said he wanted to make the issues that matter to the general public political issues again.

“I think young people have to re-emerge as a political force in America,” he said.

Seth Landau, campus coordinator for the New Voters Project, a nonpartisan group aimed at increasing voter turnout for people ages 18 to 24, said it was good to encourage college students to be part of the election.

“It’s never too early to start engaging young people in the political process,” Landau said.

Schmidt said it would take a crisis that personally affected young people to turn their interest toward the election.

“The problem is college students are really kind of neither here nor there,” he said. “They’re between things.”

Schmidt said other worries about academics, personal relationships and finances overshadow interest in the political process.

“It’s got to rise in importance,” he said “And those things, when you get up in the morning, are more important than John Kerry.”