National costs tripled in past two decades

Textbook prices across the country have nearly tripled in the last two decades, a trend that is also jacking up prices at the UofA Bookstore.

A study released last week by the Government Accountability Office reported the prices of college textbooks in the U.S. has been rising primarily due to the introduction of products designed to accompany textbooks by publishing.

This supplemental material, including CD-ROMs and companion text, has been the biggest culprit of increasing prices. [Read article]

In his second year at the helm of the UA soccer team, head coach Dan Tobias turned a team that tied for last place in the Pacific 10 Conference in 2003 to the Pac-10 co-champions in 2004.

They broke or tied 31 records last season, both team and individual, and made their first trip to the postseason in the team's 10-year history.

Tobias, named the 2004 National Coach of the Year by Soccer America, sat down with the Arizona Daily Wildcat to talk about the state of his team going into the 2005 season, filling the holes left by arguably two of the best players to ever play for the Wildcats, and those pesky preseason polls. [Read article]

Ideally, university administrators created the position of teaching assistant in order for those graduate students to serve as the voice of the professor but on a much more abbreviated pay scale. But while they are encouraged to communicate with TAs in lieu of tracking down the professor, undergraduates are facing mounting difficulties in actually understanding international assistants.

With more foreign-born graduate students filling the coveted roles of teaching assistants, students across the U.S. are dealing with communication barriers because of different language impediments. At the UA, out of the 1,400 teaching assistants currently employed, about 25 percent are international graduate students. While this doesn't necessarily imply that all international students struggle with English, this 25 percent does indicate that the UA needs to pay special attention to assisting International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) acclimate to a new culture. [Read article]