high school student here, but I take college classes, too. Books for three classes totaled $600 - my real analysis book was $120, books for my computer science class came to $240, and the remainder was for a grad level chemistry class I'm taking. Thankfully, the state pays for everything, so I just laughed a little when they rang up the total. When I buy textbooks just to teach myself things, I usually use a combination of google books, chegg, ebay, amazon, and a few other resources. I've never paid more then $30 for a book that way (and that was for a calculus book covering calc I, II, and III) Aside from a few very wealthy (and selective) universities in the US, tuition charges are much higher. For an average state university, tuition charges run about $10,000/year, though good private universities run all the way up to $60,000/year.