University students across Canada are not just going into debt for tuition, but now for textbooks as well.
Each semester hundreds of thousands of students pay upwards of 1,000 dollars for their textbooks, according to the Canadian Federation of Students.
Science courses often have required textbooks of 250 dollars each.
In the past 15 years, the cost of textbooks has increased over four times the rate of inflation.
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the price of textbooks has increased by more than 800 percent in the last 30 years. This is triple the cost increase of the Consumer Price Index.
The textbook industry is taking advantage of the high mandatory demand by students.
University students have tried to get around these skyrocketing prices but they find themselves hitting a wall.
With the editions changing every few years, students are unable to purchase second hand books at a discounted rate.
Another strategy is to split a textbook between two or three classmates. The shortfall of this is the limited access during times of midterms and finals.
Universities need to intervene and find a solution to this growing economic problem. There are enough barriers to higher education, let’s not make textbooks one of them.
