More reasons to not go to college: The price of books

By the time I went to college in the 90's it was presented as being almost mandatory to those of us that were in high school. We were told over and over again that if we didn't go the college that we would be subjecting ourselves to a lifetime of poverty and destitution. In reality I have found over time that this was a sham and the guidance counselors and teachers that were involved in the indoctrination were likely in on it and gained personally from it via gifts or maybe even cash payments.

Like a lot of people where I am from, I didn't have enough money to go to college. Because I was young and naïve I presumed that this was just because college is expensive because it has to be but the reality is that college, at least in the United States, is a massive con and the prices are intentionally and unnecessarily inflated.

There is no good reason for universities to cost as much as they do and this is exemplified by the fact that the price of college has gone up MASSIVELY since I have been alive and well before that also.

If you look at the cost of almost everything else (other than medical care which is also seriously broken) in the USA you will see that there is no economically sensible reason for a university to cost as much as it does. Yet it continues to be this expensive because the US population continues to be suckered by the entire process.

I recall a time that I was in college and was looking at the new book requirements for my upcoming semester. The book was being changed over to a new edition but because I didn't really care about the class and knew a friend that had last year's version of the book I just took that for free. When I turned up in class the times that the teacher would refer to the book page number mine was always wrong. The problem with this situation was that my book in fact did contain, word-for-word what she was referring to, it was just on a different page number. The ENTIRE BOOK was there word-for-word with literally not a single word changed. The only difference was that the chapters were in different orders and the questions at the end of a chapter had different numbers in the equations.

When I asked my professor about this she simply said "we have a book on reserve that you can use for free in the library." She offered no explanation as to why she would require a NEW edition of the textbook when she was certainly aware that it was the same book with different page numbers and a different color cover. She definitely knew this yet was complicit in the outright theft of money out of the pockets of hundreds of families for an already overpriced book.

Let me ask you this: Is there any justification for a book costing $140 when it isn't some sort of limited edition collector's item? Because this is what your average textbook costs for each class in college. Can you imagine how poorly this item would sell at that price point if it was something that the public has the option of buying or not buying? I would imagine that they would sell zero of them if they didn't have the university oligarchy in USA bought and paid for.

By the way that "reserved book" at the library that I was promised would be there for "free" could not be found. I doubt it was ever put there. The professor that told me this in the classroom was likely just doing damage control in front of the other students and knew that the book wasn't actually available there. I could have gotten her into a lot of trouble if smartphones and the attached cameras had existed back then... but then she would have punished me by having me fail the class.

The professors are in on it and are a huge part of the overall problem. They are padding their own wallets at the expense of the students that aren't learning anything from the professor in the first place and they are the reason why this corrupt system self-perpetuates. Whether or not the universities in question pressure them to do this is likely a given "yes," and they are all just protecting this secret very carefully. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the writing on the wall here though.

There is no justification for a book that nobody would use otherwise costing as much as college textbooks cost. It's a sham and by the time you are finished with 4 years of college you will see $4000 per person stolen from every single student that attends a 4-year university in the United States. We need education do we? I think we simply need to be smarter about our education and stop depending on our overlords to guide us to it. They do not have your best interests in mind.