Here in Belgium it depends a lot on the study discipline: the pricing for the course notes in say physics and mathematics were quite reasonable like ~10 euros f

Here in Belgium it depends a lot on the study discipline: the pricing for the course notes in say physics and mathematics were quite reasonable like ~10 euros for a course, about 10 courses, so ~100 euros a year printed in a copy shop, while for other (traditionally higher social class) study disciplines like law or economics many professors wrote and require using the books they wrote themselves (through a publisher) costing easily about ~100 euros per course amounting to many hundreds of euros per year. Is this a bribe? nearly all white collar crime is optimized to skirt the definition and hides behind prestige. In my opinion the solution is easy: to receive subsidy from the government, universities must provide their courses online free and in either the public domain or under a copyleft license, so that all citizens paying taxes can benefit from what they payed for (both indirectly through the usual study by other citizens, as directly by self-study). If a professor refuses to put his course in the public domain, fire or replace him with a professor willing to put his textbook in the public domain. Courses only change slowly over the years in practice, why should professors be able to extort a hidden enrollment fee from their students? The only reason I can think of is to arrange gate-keeping of those professions set aside for the higher classes... since the lower classes will then choose the other disciplines even though the university wide enrollment fee is superficially "the same". If the university refuses to put its courses in the public domain, the government should refuse to subsidize the university. To make sure the populace has unbridled access to all relevant course materials, reward students for telling on professors / universities for handing out materials without uploading them to the public domain or copyleft courses platform. All a professor has to do is upload the materials.