It’s time to stop making excuses for expensive textbooks - By Zachary Keel, TX State

Our inexorable march to poverty and struggle is lunch conversation fodder; as students, we’re all too familiar with financial juggling and the ubiquitous daily gouging associated with college. “Affording” college is a myth of yesteryear wrapped up in “bootstraps” language meant to deride the ever-so-lazy younger generations. Everything is more expensive now—average tuition at a four-year public institution has seen a three-fold increase over the past 30 years. Cost-of-living is more—everything is more, higher and less accessible—it’s depressing. Financial barriers pop up from every angle for students on the degree track, but there’s one last barrier that always creeps up and snaps up the last little bit of money in Bobcats’ accounts: textbooks. Textbooks are expensive, they’re often unnecessary and the for-profit tangled mess of an industry is wholly immoral. Textbooks should be a part of the tuition package or free; nothing else will do. http://star.txstate.edu/2019/02/its-time-to-stop-making-excuses-for-expensive-textbooks/