Class Year
2022
Document Type
Blog Post
Publication Date
9-15-2019
Department 1
Center for Public Service
Abstract
The price of my German textbook is equal to three months of rent with utilities back home. My books for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology equal the cost of feeding my family for a whole month. But these aren’t news. American Enterprise Institute reports that the college textbook prices “are 812 percent higher than they were a little more than three decades ago.”
Some students came to Gettysburg aware of costs, so they moved into first year dorms armed with Amazon Prime memberships and accounts on sites for renting textbooks. Some looked for classes that offer cheaper (or no) textbooks in advance. Because that seems to be our only solution: to learn to shrug shoulders at the injustice and adapt because we learned that it’s normal to pay for education we’re already paying so much for. Having textbooks is considered a required part of enrolling in classes, and the sacrifice that students have to make to afford them is taken for granted. [excerpt]
Copyright Note
This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Huskic, Hana, "Cheating the Textbook System" (2019). SURGE. 347.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/surge/347
Comments
Surge is a student blog at Gettysburg College where systemic issues of justice matter. Posts are originally published at surgegettysburg.wordpress.com Through stories and reflection, these blog entries relate personal experiences to larger issues of equity, demonstrating that –isms are structural problems, not actions defined by individual prejudice. We intend to popularize justice, helping each other to recognize our biases and unlearn the untruths.