It's not just tuition; it's the cost of books

On Dec. 8 David Broder had an excellent column concerning college costs and what faculty can do to start containing them. The only problem is he didn't mention the 800-pound gorilla in the room that students are all too aware of: the ridiculous prices that college bookstores charge for textbooks required by the instructors.

I recently returned to school and discovered that these costs are frequently equal to or greater than tuition. Last semester's books cost me over $900. A student used to be able to get somewhat of a break if he/she bought used books, but the publishers got around that by issuing frequent and unnecessary new editions of the same material the earlier editions covered just as well. Another scam that gets pulled on students is packaging the overpriced books with CD-ROM's that aren't available if you try to bypass the college bookstore and buy them cheaper through Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.

One way to fix this is require the colleges be the ones to buy the books and then lease them to the students for a nominal fee. That would give them the incentive to look for cheaper alternatives, such as online books that students could pay a reasonable licensure fee to access, looking for books that will get the job done but are reasonably priced, or making use of the same edition for a longer period of time. When they aren't the ones paying for them, it is too easy for colleges and instructors to assign the most expensive books they can find as their textbooks.

Another solution would be to have the federal Department of Education be in charge of student loans and give them the same power as Medicare has with hospitals and doctors: let them decide how much a book is worth, or what is a proper tuition, and then pay the college only that amount.

The bottom line is, most new jobs being created require college degrees, and the trend is for community college becoming less and less affordable without going deeply into student loan debt trying to access them. Allowing colleges to just charge whatever they feel like for tuition and assign the most expensive textbooks in the bookstore hasn't worked for students, so it is time for some sort of government regulation if the colleges won't fix the problem voluntarily.

Charles E. Crouse

Elgin