re: College Texbook Prices have gone up 1,041% since 1977

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Basically, since the inception of the DoEd, and the advent of federal loans, tuition has SKYROCKETED, even compared to real wages adjusted for inflation.

Who would have thought that non-meritorious lending would lead to increased demand? Who would have known that colleges and universities would have learned to increase prices due to guaranteed income?

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Tuition is raised to 10,000 a year. Many students can't afford it. The government steps in an loans them the money at criminal intrest rates that immediately begins compounding the day they take the loan so their principle almost doubles before they get out. Some students go this route because education is important and if you do go to college it's because you're dedicated and you want to learn.

The government and universities smell blood in the water. Before you know it, admissions standards plummet, class size exolodes, tuition quadroupels and the government ensures the universities get all they want and buttfricks all the students. Then when the students finally get to the University, the school shoves them further and deeper into debt while providing them no real Avenue to the real world or caring in the slightest about their students as long as their tuition check clears in time.

The government, drunk on interest rates and the guise of "supporting" education doesn't give a shite and eventually we're left with an education system in shambles, failing rates across the country, embarrassing scores world wide, crushing debt and hopelessness in a majority of students and no way to claw out of this ridiculous and harmful system of death.

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I just don't see why teachers use the newest books. Do they cut deals with the publishing companies?

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IIRC, it isn't always the teachers. I had a professor in college who told us what book we needed and advised us all to buy an older edition online to save money. He said nothing he was teaching us was different up to three editions ago or something. So I bought the previous year's edition online but it never came in. Wound up stopping payment through the credit card because Amazon was being worthless, but I still needed a book for a test in a week. Had to buy it new for $120 from the LSU Bookstore. Then those assholes wouldn't take it back at the end of the semester because "there was a new edition coming out." I was a sophomore that year and literally never bought or sold another book from/to them after that.

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Tuition is raised to 10,000 a year. Many students can't afford it. The government steps in an loans them the money at criminal intrest rates that immediately begins compounding the day they take the loan so their principle almost doubles before they get out. Some students go this route because education is important and if you do go to college it's because you're dedicated and you want to learn. The government and universities smell blood in the water. Before you know it, admissions standards plummet, class size exolodes, tuition quadroupels and the government ensures the universities get all they want and buttfricks all the students. Then when the students finally get to the University, the school shoves them further and deeper into debt while providing them no real Avenue to the real world or caring in the slightest about their students as long as their tuition check clears in time.

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And don't forget that many of these universities have tens of millions (some even hundreds) of dollars in endowments that continue to grow while tuition and fees increase...

Supply and demand. Find a way to buy an Econ textbook and learn about it

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It took me a while to realize the students werent learning material because they werent buying the textbooks and didnt have that additional resource between class meetings..

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That's because students were spoon fed in high school. You get to college, and a lot of the homework is no longer required for a grade. That was the biggest learning curve for me when I got to college.

With that being said, many of my undergrad and grad professors did not recommend reading the book for more than reference purposes. Interesting, I found that reading my organic chemistry textbook was the most useful.

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And they didnt know where to start when it came to studying or asking the right questions

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I describe this feeling as being lost, but not even knowing what question to ask.

This is why I torrent most of my textbooks now. I'm not paying fricking $300 for a textbook that I will use for 4 months.

Spent $450 on a book for a 7 week graduate finance course.

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Eliminate the Department of Education

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All that really needs to be said. It has no business existing on the federal level when it's a state responsibility.

The webassign stuff irks me more than the books. Teacher is too lazy to review your homework, so I'll charge him an extra 75 bucks and have a computer do it. "But there are 500 people in your math class, there's no way a teacher can grade all that homework". Dont explain the reason why you are fu*king me by presenting another way in which you are fu*king me.

Worst situation with books for me was having to drop a class and take it the next semester, only to have a different teacher with an entirely different textbook.

But overall, I cant complain about costs. I graduated from LSU and it was cheaper than sending my kid to daycare. Its not that I'm for raising prices, but ultimately I feel like we send too many people to college. It's one of our issues. If you graduate high school, there's probably a university somewhere that will accept you. That puts a lot of unnecessary demand out there for books. I've read that 45% of college undergrads in the US do not graduate. Why are we sending so many in the first place. Admissions used to try to weed those kids out. I dont know if it was the same for everyone else, or maybe I wisemed up and found deals online and such, but it seemed like my entry level books (biology, physics, etc.) were much more expensive.