Some of my favorite commercials on television are those funny MasterCard commercials that end with something being priceless.

The funniest one I have seen was on the Internet and involved adding the costs of basic date expenses like dinner, a movie and popcorn. The ad ended with "a date's father who has a sense of humor - priceless."

I feel like college is one of those commercials, only with an ever-increasing list of expenses. In the end, the corny tag line would be something along the lines of a degree being priceless.

With new technologies catching on more quickly every semester, that list of expenses grows faster than ever before. Tuition climbs every year, doubling since 1999, but that is a whole different article.

The costs that I am talking about here are relatively new to the college student, compared to just a decade ago.

In the modern college era, Blackboard, or CourseWeb, offers teachers the ability to post material on the Internet where students can access it at their leisure. In the old days - like the 1990s - professors would have had to run off copies of all the supplemental materials they wanted students to have.

Now that teachers have CourseWeb at their disposal, they can scan a document and in minutes have it available to their students. The responsibility of finding the material and printing it out is shifted onto the students.

Although paper is fairly cheap, printers and ink cartridges are not. Last semester I ran through two ink cartridges at $30 a pop. If students choose to print materials out in the library within the 900-page limit, they'll save on ink. However, they sacrifice personal time spent waiting around the computer lab for the material.

Before scanners and CourseWeb allowed professors to post material, the University ate the printing costs for all of the handouts, and teachers, or their aides, had to invest time running off hundreds or even thousands of copies.

That alone might have deterred instructors from teaching material not covered in the book. With the relative ease with which professors can use additional reading material, I'll assume they're more likely to do so.

My anthropology class, for example, bases the majority of its content off CourseWeb material. I paid $47 for the textbook from which I'm required to read 50 pages. By contrast, more than 200 pages of material are required and posted on CourseWeb.

Another modern-day innovation is the clicker system, an ingenious little scam to steal more money out of the student's pocket. For those who are fortunate enough not to know what the clickers are, allow me to explain.

It's a little blue remote, manufactured by Einstruction Corporation, which allows teachers to pose a question and electronically record answers within a matter of seconds. It is kind of neat in that it gives the teacher credible information on what their students understand minutes after covering the material.

The convenience for this is not free, as the remotes themselves run between $5 and $10. On top of the initial cost, each student has to go online and register the clicker with the company's Web site, for an additional $15, more if one chooses to register it for multiple semesters.

If a student forgets his clicker, or the battery dies, he loses the opportunity to score participation points for that class. These technologies offer teachers more flexibility than in the past, but who's being charged for that flexibility?

It would be one thing if tuition prices were adjusted each year to offset the additional costs being shifted to students, but that's expecting far too much. How would Pitt be able to pay its chancellor one of the highest salaries in the nation if it were fiscally reasonable with students?

Arguing this point with University officials is about as pointless as telling our state government to increase funding to public universities. The state blames the school for charging too much, and the school blames the state for lack of funding.

The poor students, and I mean poor in many senses of the word, are left struggling to get by.

In this case, I think the MasterCard commercial should have a slightly different ending, because the cost of a degree is not exactly priceless. On the contrary, it costs as much money as schools and companies like Einstruction Corp. can pry out of our pockets.

To help Randal offset his educational costs, e-mail him your comments at randalsopinion@hotmail.com so he can sell them on the black market.