I found out very quickly when I went to school that these schools aren't around for our benefit. They don't really care if we succeed or not, they're just around to make as much money off of us as they can. I know when I went to University two years ago, I would go into the bookstore with my booklist, get the prices, and go to Chapters. I remember saving almost $200 one year by doing it this way, but I would occassionally get the odd book that I could only get through the bookstore. It changed a bit when I finished at University and went to College, since all of my books are either Microsoft or Cisco certification books, they apparently aren't allowed to mark them up (they wouldn't tell me the reason), so I don't have to buy them online anymore. Still, occassionally I would have to buy some book for some course that would be marked up like crazy, and I always found it cheaper elsewhere.
One thing I loved about the bookstore was how they would help me out and buy back my books at the end of the semester, but I only ever did that once. I'm not going to do them a favour and have them buy back my $200 text book for $25 and have them resell it next year for $150. Fuck them, I'd rather give it away for free or burn the damn thing.
Theres no sense in bitching about it anyways, I'm in my fourth year of school and I'm already $35000 in debt, another $15000 and I should be done.