My first two semesters I worked 10hrs/week in the pit (the basement of food services) on weekends at 6am cleaning dishes. Not that fun.
Each semester after that I would work in either multi-media production or as the only student assistant systems analyst. This meant converting cobol applications running on a Prime mini-computer to Oracle Forms.
They didn't have a computer science major at the time, so I majored in mathematics (and loved learning about proving things and that advanced mathematics != calculus). While they do have computer science now, I would highly recommend doing self learning (lisp, python, javascript, ...) and majoring in math, science or even theater!
But if the textbook manufacturers don't also get a dose of it (or a swift kick in the teeth, I'm flexible on the matter), it won't solve the entirety of the problem. A few years ago, my girlfriend paid nearly $400 for a single book/CD-ROM/online combo for one class--and the CD-ROM/online service was licensed to disallow resale. That was the most expensive, but many classes require three or four texts at $100+ each. So, even if the schools themselves lower admissions dramatically, there's still a huge swath of costs that lower income folks won't be able to manage. It just seems like the textbook industry has gone mad with power and greed...I managed to make it through school with almost entirely used books from alternate sources (usually prior editions, even, which could be had for pennies on the dollar from local used bookstores), but the textbook manufacturers seem to be figuring out ways to prevent that--more frequent new editions, more dramatic changes between editions to make it harder for students to find their way in older editions, and the associated media licensing tricks to prevent legal used sales entirely.
I would order the "restricted asian edition" textbooks on-line for about a quarter of the normal price. The quality is not as good, but the content is certainly there. I never exactly understood the legality of doing this, but it's certainly a testament to the growing problem that is the college textbooks market.
When I was in school, we'd always order from Amazon.co.uk because European countries apparently subsidize textbooks, and so we could get them for about 1/3 of the U.S. price. Unfortunately the falling USD has kinda nixed that practice, and I think Amazon may've started adding shipping surcharges for ordering from Amazon.co.uk and shipping to the U.S.
It's perfectly legal, but it is not authorized (meaning that the publisher probably threatens to stop selling to anyone who re-sells their subsidized bulk orders)
To be honest w/ you, I never spent more than $30 on textbooks per class (w/ a rare exception or 2), because I was always able to find really cheap version with gettextbooks.com or download and print it off for $5.
It sounds like they are rationally taking advantage of a situation that they are not forcibly creating. That's not going mad with power; they are just charging what people will pay.
In my experience the people who select the text are just professors, either individually or in some kind of committee. Yes, the publishers will send them free copies of textbooks, but that's not exactly a great perk.
There could really be room for a startup publisher to come along and start selling a $30 textbook series, though. It's not that hard to find somebody who can write a textbook of reasonably high quality for, say, first-year physics or chemistry, and if you make enough noise about how overpriced the other textbooks are it shouldn't be too hard to persuade at least some departments to adopt your book.
My first two semesters I worked 10hrs/week in the pit (the basement of food services) on weekends at 6am cleaning dishes. Not that fun.
Each semester after that I would work in either multi-media production or as the only student assistant systems analyst. This meant converting cobol applications running on a Prime mini-computer to Oracle Forms.
They didn't have a computer science major at the time, so I majored in mathematics (and loved learning about proving things and that advanced mathematics != calculus). While they do have computer science now, I would highly recommend doing self learning (lisp, python, javascript, ...) and majoring in math, science or even theater!