Each semester begins year after year, and I make that dreaded trip to the University Book Store to purchase a few books. I compare online prices to store prices in frustration as I slowly accept the inevitable hit my pocketbook is about to take. “That will be $217.49,” the cashier says with a smile. She grasps the single book I am purchasing and asks if I found everything alright.

“Everything but my dignity,” I think to myself.

How can a hunk of tree matter with some funny squiggles cost as much as a new TV?

Now it’s halfway through the semester, and I’m digging through my backpack searching for some note cards. “What’s this,” I wonder as my hand strikes an unknown object. I remove the item and immediately recall that day in the bookstore. It’s the book that cost me over $200, and I haven’t used it once.

This problem seems to be ubiquitous for college students. The university demands each class has a required textbook. The textbooks are all available to you at the campus bookstore for an exorbitant price of course. But look on the bright side — at the end of the semester you can always return that book for a whopping 5 percent of the purchase cost, if you’re lucky, just to see it sold next semester $20 cheaper than the initial price. And we complain about gas prices.

There is a simple solution Iowa State can employ to rid our campus of all these textbook shenanigans. The university can solve all this trouble while still requiring students to purchase the same number of textbooks. To mollify the student body’s anguish, all Iowa State needs to do is make sure the textbooks actually benefit the purchaser. How can this be done?

Simple. We need to decrease the competence of our professors. Hire more teachers who speak English as a second or third language, not as a first. The harder the professor is to understand, the more students will rely on the textbook. Perhaps English should not even be a prerequisite here at Iowa State. If we start hiring teachers who can barely spit out a few English phrases, classroom learning will fall off the charts while textbook use will sky rocket.

Employ teachers who are less qualified and put them in the big lecture halls. This will send herds of students to the library, rummaging through their books trying to understand exactly what is going on. We need truly unintelligible individuals instructing classes. Randomly assign faculty new teaching assignments. I want math professors teaching journalism courses and chemistry professors teaching history. In fact we could abandon instructors altogether. Let’s have students teach. Not students who have taken the course before, but students who are actually in the class. As it becomes harder to learn during class, textbooks will get more use.

Maybe we should discard the notion of class altogether. Everything can move to online lectures or at least the really challenging classes. Try learning quantum mechanics from your online professor without opening the textbook a few times. This is a foolproof method to help students get real value from their textbooks.

Incompetent professors engender greater use of textbooks. Alexis Moreno, sophomore in aerospace engineering, says two of the four textbooks he purchased go completely untouched.  

“If I learn enough in class, I don’t need to read the book,” Moreno said. “In my other courses, the book is completely necessary. I don’t even go to those classes because the teachers are so poor.”

Too many semesters have gone by with books unread. Too many dollars have been spent on stuffed, heavy backpack. If students are going to buy a textbook we want to put it to use. We want to get our money’s worth.  The solution is clear. If the amount of material learned in class decreases, if the quality of lectures slide and practice exams diminishes, the value of textbooks will escalate but hopefully not their price.