Textbook Shakedown
Though the exorbitant cost of textbooks has become a staple of any discussion about the costs of college, it's a shame that this is now simply taken as a matter of course. "Yeah, textbooks are expensive," students say, "but there's nothing we can do about it." Unfortunately, that is exactly the position textbook companies want to keep students in - feeling that they're powerless to change the way the system works. For decades, students really have been in that position. Because of the way publishers have kept professors in the dark about prices, students were unable to exert any power of consumer choice - all while publishers jacked up prices (a staggering 186% since 1986). With plenty of new options, however, including e-books, book rentals, open books, and online book sellers, students are finally taking some of the power back. None of these solutions is perfect, but by using a combination of them - and with the helpful restructuring the government is imposing to keep publishers in check - students can shrewdly save a few hundred bucks each year. And in college, that's big.
