Gasoline is $3+ per gallon, textbooks run $500 or more per semester, tuition has had double-digit increases. Face it, going to college is getting way too expensive. What's a poor struggling student supposed to do? Here are some suggestions for keeping your head (and finances) above water:

Textbooks: This is the big one everybody wrestles with. Figures are hard to pin down, but students are spending $500 or more per semester on textbooks. Textbook prices have risen faster over recent years, well exceeding inflation. Why? Well, there are alot of possible explanations, but here's a telling statistic: according to the Association of American Publishers, college textbook publishers have been shipping fewer books in four of the past five years. So how do you continue to deliver growing revenues to your corporate overlords when you're shipping less units? That's right -- you raise prices.

(Read more about the secret behind textbook costs in this article.)

So what can a starving student do in the face of rising textbook prices? You have several options:

• Buy used books: Publishers don't get a cent when you buy a used book. Therefore, purchase the used book and deny them the revenue -- Capitalism 101.
• Buy a foreign version: The version sold on Amazon UK is pretty much the same as the one sold in the US, only it generally isn't bundled with useless crap and it costs much less. Shipping will take a bit of your savings, and you won't get the book immediately, but you will save some cash.
• Don't buy at all: Sometimes, you find that you can get away with not buying the textbook at all. When I went to school, I bought every book my first year and didn't use some of them. By my third year I bought less than half the books, because I'd figured out the deal. Put your charisma to work and beg or borrow your way to less books. (Don't forget the library can be a great free resource.)

Tuition: This is another big one everybody wrestles with. Here's a way to put tuition in a new light -- school tuition is retail, and NOBODY should pay retail. Look into financial aid, grants, scholarships, and tuition assistance programs at your job or church. You'd be surprised what you can turn up when you look hard enough.

Also, consider taking some intro courses at a cheaper school that can be transferred back. (I have a friend that's taking all of her intro courses at a community college, and plans to transfer them all to a "real" school later.) Be extra careful when doing this, because you don't want to end up paying for courses that don't fit your degree program.

Courses: The longer you spend in college, the more it costs you. Be careful that the courses you take fit into your degree program, because there's nothing worse than wasting your time and money on a course that doesn't get you closer to graduating. Visit your academic adviser every semester, and double-check the answers you get with another adviser. (Sometimes they can give you the wrong answer, and sometimes the rules of the game can change.) Above all, use the best way of studying to make those courses count by passing them.

Academic help: Take whatever free help you can get, whether it's study groups or tutoring lab or College-Cram.com. Never look a gift horse in the mouth!

Your college years are meant to be a time for personal growth and education. Don't let the growth be solely in your outstanding loan balance!