Same goes for books. Your prices for textbooks over there are hilarious. They're priced purely based on just how much you can milk the students, or rather whoever finances them.
To add on every year the text is usually reprinted/updated for the purposes of trying to kill the used book market and in many cases my professors were the authors of the required texts.
Yeah and to a captive market too. College textbook sales is one of the most insane rackets I've ever witnessed... "milking the students" is no exaggeration.
I absolutely agree. The whole “college experience” from overpriced textbooks to overpriced dorms is a huge racket. The covid pandemic might really shake things up though if there’s no school starting in the fall though.
I've advised a couple of people looking to go to school to take a gap-year to hedge risk of the schools having their stuff together.
If there's anything I've noticed about higher education after working in/with it, its that they're constantly behind the curve in just about everything that's not sports/research related.
I would be very scared of having a second-rate experience due to a college (and professors) not being prepared for this to the point I would sit a year out and crank out gen-eds at home in already established online programs.
Take this all with a grain of salt... Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just don't see schools being ready for this and having a solid experience ready for new students by fall unless they've already practiced remote learning/class programs.
When I was a sophomore in my undergrad degree one of the professors was habitually late. As we were only meeting 2-3 times a week I calculated the dollar value of that lateness as a part of our tuition. People were not happy.
Hopefully at the end of all this we realize that community colleges can teach the majority of a 4yr degree and even have labs already set up.