Ah, fall is in the air. It starts with a surprisingly crisp morning, and before you know it the pools are closed, kids are lining up for their very first bus rides, and light summer traffic is no more. But the surest sign of fall? Students and their parents facing sticker-shock about the ever-rising costs of higher education.
With textbook prices running upwards of $1,000 a semester is it any surprise that some enterprising students have begun to take on textbook publishers? Read on for the dish on the Student Public Interest Research Group’s work to negotiate for better textbook pricing. They’ve engaged college and university faculty and students to agitate for change, and so far, so good — Thomson Learning, one of their targets for action, as agreed to provide the UCLA math department and book store discounted calculus books — and Thomson’s just released new no-fills, lower-cost textbook options. Verrrrry interesting.
Of course, textbooks can be only a drop in the overall College Cash Outlay. Tuition loans can make book costs seem positively paltry in comparison. Enter the student lenders, the $20 billion industry who markets loans to students who don’t qualify or have maxed out on government aid. And federal regulators have noticed. According to the New York Times, in addition to last year’s exposure of dicey financial ties between lenders and universities, “The student loan industry could be in for more jolts. Policy makers and regulators say that there are dangerous parallels between the private student loan and sub-prime mortgage markets. In both, there have been phenomenal profits, aggressive marketing and, until the recent credit market turmoil, a healthy appetite from Wall Street investors.” Uh-oh.
