The Importance Of Unfair Textbook Prices

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According to Forbes in January of 2015, the average cost of college for 2018 to 2021 could grow to 334,000 for a bachelor's degree. College is becoming a more and more expensive investment for today’s youth, and a component of this is the cost of textbooks. Textbooks are a hidden expense of college that not many consider, until they have to pay the outrageous prices of textbooks. Unfair textbooks prices place an additional fiscal burden on already struggling college college students. According to NBC News in September of 2014, since 2006 the price of college textbooks has risen a whole 73 %. As a college student, I am not surprised with this statistic at all. Textbooks can cost between 200 to 400 dollars. With multiple classes, my textbook …show more content…

The most obvious one is that students will choose not to buy textbooks for certain classes or at all. According to ATTN in March of 2015, 70% of college students report that they will not buy one or more textbooks because of their costs. With the already outrageous cost of college, many students are already swamped with unacceptable levels of debt. It is reasonable to expect that some of these students cannot afford an extra thousand dollars a semester for textbooks. This will obviously affect their academic performance greatly. Without the correct book, a student will have to try to share with a friend or find a library copy. However, this is unreliable and may require the student to put off assignments or learn from a different version than his peers. This issue is particularly unsettling when it is considered that the students being affected most by these prices are ones that come from lower income families. According to StudentPirgs in February of 2016, one third of college students use their financial aid to purchase textbooks. 50% of community college students use financial aid to purchase textbooks, while only 28% utilize financial aid for textbooks at four year public universities, according to the same source. Income inequality has become a central issue in the United States, and it is sad to think that textbook prices are adding to this gap. The financial aid that is supposed to help poorer families is being used to buy textbooks, which are priced unfairly. There is no way the amount of financial aid given out has kept up with the surge in textbook prices, which means that year after year, students have to use more financial aid to buy books. Essentially, this means that people have less financial aid to use for other expenses of college, such as tuition. I would also theorize that a good portion of the 70% of students who choose to forgo a textbook are also from poor families. These poorer students

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