Many college students won't be home for the holiday

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Mike Pitts, 19, can't wait to get to Minneapolis for Thanksgiving, where he'll load up on stuffing (his favorite), pumpkin pie and lively conversation around the table. The only bummer for Pitts, a sophomore at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., is that two key elements of the holiday will be sorely missing: Mom and Dad.Mike's parents, Amy and Steve, and younger brothers Jeff and Dan moved from the Twin Cities to Phoenix a few years ago. When Steve Pitts priced a round-trip ticket for Mike at about $750, the family shifted to Plan B: Mike will hitch a car ride Tuesday to Minneapolis with his childhood buddy Chris Mottaz, also a Purdue sophomore, and eat that stuffing with Grandma and his extended family. Amy, "who's a little bit sad" about the decision, takes heart that her son "will be with people he knows." The Pitts family is hardly the only American one winging it this Thanksgiving, particularly those with college kids studying far from home. While in years past many parents thought nothing of flying their budding adults home twice within a matter of weeks, this year they're letting the economy do the talking. And it's saying: See you at Christmas.A survey published last week by AAA reported that, while average gasoline prices have dropped to their lowest level since early 2005, Thanksgiving road travel still will decrease by 1.2 percent. Air travel is expected to drop by 7.2 percent, largely because of 2.6 million fewer seats, and airfares throttling up:Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari isn't predicting an increase in rail travelers, either, "mostly due to the economy and the fact that gasoline prices have been falling. The car, truck and SUV are our primary competition," he said, "and those are cheaper to operate this Thanksgiving." Greyhound spokeswoman Abby Wambaugh remains hopeful. The number of new riders increased slightly from the second quarter of 2008 to the third; 19.2 percent up to 20.8 percent. "The majority of our customers purchase on the day of travel, so as far as predicting trends, we can't do that until after the holiday." But Thanksgiving is one of their busiest times of year, Wambaugh said, with about 500,000 passengers.Some guilt-ridden parents aren't waiting until Christmas to send packages. On Nov. 21, Amy Hauge, owner of Amy's Classic Confections in Minneapolis, was packaging up a handful of delectable gift baskets that will be shipped to college students from California to Kentucky to New York City, to arrive before Thursday. She filled them with cookies, brownies, popcorn "and chocolate turkeys and candy corn to make it look a little more like Thanksgiving."She might want to save a few chocolate turkeys for one of her young workers from Iowa. "She's hanging around here until Christmas," Hauge said.Bill Ihle, executive vice president of the luxury fruit purveyor Harry & David, said he's also seeing an increase in shipments this month with "Dormitory" or "University" on the mailing address.But deferred gratification isn't necessarily a bad thing. For some students, this economic reality check offers a good opportunity to give thanks for what they do have, even if they don't have it this year.Shaly Borgen, a theater student at New York University, lives just outside of San Francisco. "Flights are really expensive and my family is just barely affording the cost of NYU," she wrote in an e-mail. "My mom is a violinist and my dad works for a wine and spirits company, so I'm pretty sure the bad economy is going to hit us soon. I really miss California and moderate weather and my friends and family, but I'm adjusting more and more to staying here over breaks."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)