By Matthew Mancuso
Correspondent
College is a great time for many students for many reasons, but it’s definitely not fun for their wallets. According to The College’s financial aid website A roughly $13,000 price for in-state tuition can be a big financial undertaking, which excludes room and board and what I believe is the most unnecessary item of them all — expensive textbooks.
Many professors at the College and other universities across the country assign students textbooks each semester that can cause an even greater financial burden. But with the increasing cost of both textbooks and college tuition, colleges should be paying for such materials.
Some textbooks can cost a few hundred dollars per book, and with multiple books required for many of the courses, it’s a burden that many college students struggle to afford. Considering that students need to get numerous textbooks for each semester, it’s an option that many students find unnecessary and too expensive. For a few hundred pages of paper, is $200 really an acceptable value?
With the financial distress that many first-year students find themselves in once they have to pay tuition bills, they would be extremely grateful if schools helped them pay for a portion of their supplies.
Students at the College aren’t the only ones suffering from this injustice. A 2019 College Board study showed that students spend an average of $1,290 dollars per semester solely on textbooks. Many other educational institutions charge hundreds of dollars for textbooks, which is especially egregious considering the exuberant tuition costs that many other colleges charge.
In my experience, I find that some professors don’t even use the books for regular class use. Essentially, they’re burdening students with the responsibility of buying and unloading the textbooks. This tactic is especially unfair considering many textbooks resell for less value on second-hand sites.Instead, the College should do its students a favor and include the cost for textbooks within its tuition bill. With the College racking up an estimated $350,000 profit in its 2018 accounting report, it certainly has plenty of money to spare aid to its students. The College could perhaps provide a discount for their students, some of whom pay over $100,000 throughout their tenure as students. With the cost of college exponentially rising, there’s no reason to deepen the pockets of colleges even more.
