and buy textbooks for subjects I was interested in but would never take the course.

That was in the late 70s. I just bought 2 books for my niece plus a online study guide... $400.

... the narrative that people need to get a college education to get ahead. That might be true in many cases, but capitalism will always have "losers" who need to do the real dirty work.

1. Textbooks are much bigger in height and width and very much bigger in thickness. I have a text book that i bought in 1958 which is about 5" x 8" and maybe 1-1/2" thick. It cost $8.50 new and took me through CE201 Basic Surveying, CE 202 Advanced Surveying, and CE 308 Mapping (still have the book). My engineering structures book was even smaller and took me through two semesters of structures. Now the books are huge and are good for only a single semester class.

2. Now, each prof wants his own textbook and it is usually only good for that semester class and the books are huge. This is true at the elementary and middle school level as well. The books are huge and have too much white space. We never needed knapsacks to carry our books, just tuck the notebook and a couple of texts under your arm.

3. State aid never covered college textbooks and the price must have gone up because costs went up. There may be some kickbacks to the profs or it may be just the cost of printing and paper. A paperback novel that sells for $7.99 or $8.99 today went for 25 cents or 35 cents in the 1950s.

When I went to college in the 60s the bookstore's were part of the University. They didn't jack the price up like the private companies that have literally "taken over" what used to be college bookstores. Consequently, there are only a handful of corporate companies now running practically all these former college bookstores on our campuses.

Because these private companies have ONE goal ---making as much money as possible --- they make very few used textbooks available. For example, a few years ago I went to several of our local colleges looking for books and noticed that particularly for the required courses, Intro English, Math, etc. where most kids had to start, you would have thought that at least 500 of those beginning freshman would have sold back their English text, Math text, etc. Nope!!!! Only 3 or 4 used copies were available!!!! The rest were brand-new jacked up prices!!!

When you multiply this by every community college, college and university, night classes too, you can see how they gouge the students.

This could be changed if the students would do what we did back in the day. We got together and set up our own buy back and kids had a chance at a more reasonably priced book. (All volunteers)

I would imagine that the big Fascists corporate companies would make sure that a new "clause" would be added to disallow any competition like this though.

Also, if you search online for your book you will find that since there is practically a monopoly, you can find your book being sold with a different cover in England or Australia for $30 to $50 bucks less!!!

American students need to get some hands on life experience and work together to find a way around these Fascists American corporations.

After everything is privatized, we really won't be a genuine democratic country anymore.

Look how they have already privatized Space Travel. They get to set the price for a trip to the ISS and we, the citizens who pay taxes, get the bill they send us. No say about ANYTHING!!! (BTW -- I read that the ISS is going to be privatized in a couple of years!!!!)

They have been working now over 14 years to privatize the post office, the VA, the public libraries, the schools, the roads, the utilities, parking meters, garages, the Parks, etc. Anything that makes money that would normally go into the treasury to provide for ALL of us, they are taking over.

Don't forget -- they're the ones who keep crying for even LOWER taxes for themselves. Then they send their bills to the us, the taxpayers.

They have privatized the military - corporations are hiring people from OTHER countries to fight our wars. Check out the numbers in Iraq, and all the Middle East countries right now. Also, look what's going on in Africa. The personnel is way, way more than the US military. (We are losing control of our mission, materials, personnel, etc)

Check out NSA. That, to me, is mind-boggling that our National Security Agency now has 3 to 4 private contractors for every single US employee there. These corporations have control of each of our lives. This is going to turn out way worst than it did when the Communists set up the STASI in East Germany. They could at least try to get out and go to the West.

Folks. We need to start talking about a plan of action whereby corporations are not running this government. Got any ideas???

Bane of my existence. Basically it's a one-time-use code included in some textbooks that is used to reach required online content like quizzes, extra readings, assignments, etc. But because they can only be used once, those textbooks can't be resold to anyone whose class is using the online portion, forcing those students to buy a full-price, brand new edition every time.

Half the time the professor requires the book and then doesn't use it at all!

The larger publicly funded universities could pay professors and other educators to write textbooks and keep them up to date.

These books would be free and available online to everyone, worldwide. They could be translated into any language.

For students and teachers who want hard copies there are many places that print books on demand. My wife likes to order books on Amazon and it's remarkable to me how many are printed on the day she orders them.

Books on demand could even be an on-campus service.

Nobody ever got rich writing textbooks (well, except for a few sketchy characters...) but plenty of publishers make piles of money selling textbooks for outrageous prices, and propping up the market for new textbooks by making minor changes to them every year.

It's the 21st century, damn it!

Why must we all suffer obsolete 19th century business models?