In my understanding, community colleges are usually public and nonprofit. Tuition tends to be much cheaper than at four-year public universities (which are in t

In my understanding, community colleges are usually public and nonprofit. Tuition tends to be much cheaper than at four-year public universities (which are in turn much cheaper than privates). They tend to run shoestring budgets -- certainly this contributes to the professor pay and work load issues you also mentioned, and probably also the parking fees. As for the textbooks, I'm curious what you observed? I'm unaware of any university profiting in this manner. I am extremely aware of textbook publishers profiteering, as well as the occasional individual professor-author who shamelessly convinces the rest of their department to adopt whatever book they wrote. But the most likely reason that the book changed, in my estimation, is that individual faculty members are often given leeway to choose their own textbooks. This has some negative consequences, but in my opinion it's a good system overall. And, incidentally, if you want the best deals -- then I'd recommend that you neither buy your books from the school, nor sell them back to the school.