The Boston Globe
September 7th, 2014
Judging by the stories I hear from my parents’ friends, college students in the 1970s managed to spend more money on beer than on books. For today’s college students to pull off a feat like that, they’d need deep pockets and a taste for expensive beer.
That’s because the cost of college textbooks is out of control. Between 2002 and 2012, their prices rose by 82 percent, according to the Government Accountability Office. (Prices are up 812 percent since 1978, more than three times the rise in the consumer price index). Today, college students pay more than $1,200 on average for books and supplies every year. It’s piling an outrageous financial burden onto an educational process that’s already burying my generation in debt.