Anyone who has ever been to college knows how much it costs, and many graduates spend years and years paying off student loans. It is a huge financial commitment in most cases, and the degrees many students eventually earn aren't marketable enough to even make a decent living. Unless one majors in the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, or math, the prospects are not so good for the vast majority. Always there are exceptions, but those are few and few between.
I don't disagree with the value of a college education, and I don't think it's so much about learning as it is about development as an adult. It's a good experience even if it doesn't lead to a high paying job. So it's best to understand what college is before you go, so you won't be disappointed. Universities are just big, massive businesses, and they exist to make money - your education is a means to an end for other people who are profiting from it.
A blatant example of money grubbing is campus bookstores - they have a complete monopoly. They sell you your textbooks for sometimes $300 or more each, and they'll buy it back for a fraction of that at the end of the semester - to sell to another student all over again. Professors are also the beneficiaries of this to some extent. Colleges always get new versions of textbooks - so they can charge a new price, and professors update them slightly by changing the order of chapters, arrangement of images, etc. They make small tweaks so students have to purchase a brand new book, and they make more money. I was in college and this frustrated me to death.
But you can fight back - online retailers are just eating away at the revenue from campus bookstores. I advise you to buy your books online and sell them online. These companies also deal in used books, and many of them also rent now as well. So you don't have to bow down to the almighty campus bookstore like in the past.
You can also buy and sell to other students - I did this when I knew someone who needed my books. I'd sell them to that person because I knew I'd get a better price. The trouble was that I didn't know enough people who needed my books, so I inevitably had to sell some of them back to the bookstore.
Source by Benwade Warren
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