Every week the editorial board reflects on a current issue in Our View. The position taken does not reflect the opinions of everyone on the Hilltop Views staff. This week’s editorial board is composed of Viewpoints Editor Victoria Cavazos and Copy Chief Gabrielle Wilkosz.

It’s week three of the 2016 fall semester which means, if you’re lucky, you’ve probably just received all your textbooks. Bank account bled dry, it’s day 12 of Mac & Cheese cups. Funds are low, spirits lower.

Amid the buzz of intellectual exchange around campus, the tragic and grudging task of acquiring textbooks is something that is ceaselessly discussed; mainly, the outrageous prices and the ghastly unfairness of it all.

But these days, books are obtained with ease. Students can buy them both used and new on the internet, from their friends via social media, at discount bookstores, or even borrowed from generous and complicit classmates.

And our professors are not vampires. They are aware of the exorbitant expense of textbooks, and most keep that in mind as they are coming up with their syllabi.

Although some students think that their reading assignments are superfluous, professors usually assign them for a good reason, not simply because it is requisite of their position.

In all fairness, books are still expensive from the perspective of the student with bills to pay. But considering that they contain the fruits of years of hard work, insights and discovery, a few hundred dollars for a semester’s worth of textbooks is a steal; especially if you’re a science major, whose required reading, we’ve heard, traditionally costs a fortune.

Textbook prices aren’t the pettiest things to complain about, but it is problematic when students– and even professors– describe high textbook prices as “a scam,” as if publishing companies were immune to the laws of supply and demand and were just scheming to cheat students.

Although comments and trivial complaints like these are dropped idly, they are telling of the way we see the value of education in the digital age, where Google rules and everything we would ever want to know is stored in a database somewhere or supplied by the Internet, the anonymous giant.

We are constantly being assaulted by a deluge of random information. Attempting to understand a subject without a guide to help us sift through it all is like trying to navigate a new city in the dark without so much as a map or a pair of headlights.

Which is why good textbooks are valuable– and expensive; the authors spend time curating an experience for their readers, and, without their hard work, we’d be a bit lost. Shouldn’t they be compensated appropriately for assuming such a large responsibility?

Sure, we’re already paying high tuition dollars for a private liberal arts education, but our professors can only do so much. We get their lectures a few hours a week; the remainder of the time we rely on the authors they assign.

And it’s not like textbooks are much more expensive compared to other goods we consume. When we pay $3.50 at Jo’s for coffee, we don’t protest because we understand that we are paying for more than just coffee.

It takes a lot of people, resources, time and energy to create the cups of coffee that we wouldn’t do without.It takes the same to create a textbook, and we should be thankful that unlike old coffee grounds, old books will last and serve our purposes just fine.