There are few countries in the world that financially exploit their college students and treats them in as shabby and immoral manner as the United States.

As a student coming from a impoverished background who graduated in 1960 with a superb undergraduate education from the Pennsylvania state university system at Millersville, I was able to begin my young adult life with no educational debt whatsoever. This was accomplished by working long, hard hours during summer vacations and college holidays, holding down a job on campus 20 hours each week in a federally supported work-study program, and securing a modest $200 loan at 1.5% interest to complete my last semester while I was student teaching off campus and could not work.

Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., seen here holding a faerie stiick with Rev. Neal Thomas, played a pioneering role in the creation of the Gay Liberation movement in Los Angeles and nationally. Dr. Kilhefner is a Jungian depth psychologist in West Hollywood. He can be reached at donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.

Today as a Jungian depth psychologist and as an elder in Los Angeles’ gay community, I do a great deal of listening to young people. Their experiences with higher education are horrendous and truly unworthy of this nation.

For example, at the beginning of the school year, a phone message at the Student Counseling Center at Long Beach Community College went something like this: “Hello. Due to budget cuts, we are no longer answering the telephone. Appointments to speak to a counselor must be made in person on Monday beginning at 9 a.m. It is recommended that you get in line by 6 a.m.” And this was just to make an appointment.

The financial services industry, in close collaboration with universities, has largely taken over the funding of higher education for most students. Students coming from non-privileged backgrounds will probably leave undergraduate school with a debt ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 for that education. Graduate students can expect to incur a debt of $50,000 a year multiplied by the number of years it will take to complete the degree.

According to the Student Body Scholarship Association, college tuition costs have quadrupled since the 1980s. The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports that in 2011 alone $117 billion in student loans were taken out, bringing the total of student indebtedness to $1 trillion. This has reduced students who do not come from a wealthy family—most of them—to a state of debt peonage— perpetual debt they are forever paying off.

Nowhere is this financial gouging of students greater than in the sale of required textbooks in university bookstores. Textbook publishers have an almost captive market in college students and they are addictively jonesing—more, more, more money. Here are two current examples. They are not isolated exceptions; they are the norm.

First, last quarter—Fall 2012—a pre-med student at UCLA had to take an introductory human physiology course with a required text by Stuart Ira Fox titled Human Physiology (12^th Edition).

At the UCLA bookstore it sold for $220 (with taxes). The student went to AbeBooks.com and purchased the same book for $56.75 (that price included $46.75 for the textbook and $10 for handling and shipping)—an almost 187% markup by the UCLA bookstore over an online one. 

The content of the two books is identical but they have different covers with the following words stamped on the cheaper one: “International Edition. Not to be sold in the U.S.”

Isn’t this a form of price fixing? Will college presidents and textbook publishers be held accountable for this textbook rip-off?

Second, at Los Angeles City College on North Vermont Avenue,a young, first-time college student is taking an Introduction to Sociology course. The required textbook isSociety: The Basics (12^th Edition) by Mac Ionis. In the LACC college bookstore it sells for $120. The student does not yet know about AbeBooks.com and other online bookstores.

Students coming from non-privileged backgrounds will probably leave undergraduate school with a debt ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 for that education.

The LACC student comes from a working class family, is the first in his family to attend college, and labors extremely hard two 10 hour days each week and other numerous odd jobs for income to pay his rent, food and the cost of his college education. Some days he has to choose between eating or putting gas in his car to get to school. He cannot afford $120 for just one textbook.

LACC and other schools have devised a Rent-A-Textbook plan to “help” students afford the unaffordable Instead of buying the textbook for $120, he rents one for the semester at the campus bookstore for $90.

At the end of the semester he returns it to the bookstore and receives nothing in return. Amazingly, this is touted as helping the student, not enriching the campus bookstore at the student’s expense, as it really is.

I’m a voracious reader. No book I have bought in the past three decades, even professional books, has ever cost $220; not even $90.

College students often must choose between square meals and buying books.

I appeal to Dr. Gene Block, Chancellor of UCLA, and Dr. Max Nikias, President of USC, asking for their leadership in textbook fairness. They play a role in Los Angeles higher education ofprimus inter pares—first among equals.

Here are four suggestions to Block and Nikias: (1) that a quick study be made immediately comparing bookstore and online prices of major textbooks; (2) that a meeting be called to be attended by all Los Angeles college and university presidents specifically to focus on textbook fairness (“the buck stops here”); (3) that textbooks in campus bookstores and bookrental programs be priced in a way that does not exploit students but supports them; and (4) that each semester at registration students be provided with information about online bookstores.

If college presidents do not advocate for their students about exorbitant and unfair textbook pricing, who will?

In 1776 Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, published his influential The Wealth of Nations which has been treated like a “Bible” by capitalist (aka free enterprise) economists, particularly in the United States.

Often deliberately overlooked is Smith’s advice on two subjects: (1) never trust banks and (2) merchants should not be supported when they lobby only for their own economic self-interests and do not advocate for the common welfare of everyone as well. When it comes to college textbooks in the United States, wise, old Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave in disgust.