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Our View – Textbook prices partially professors’ fault

When returning back to school, students face a ton of problems. Aside from trying to find parking and sorting out classes, students must also face high textbook prices. While the publishers that issue these books do play a role in their cost, the reason students’ wallets may be so light after a visit to the bookstore often lies with a student’s choice in professor.

Nearly everyone has had a professor who required students to not only buy books written by the professor, but get the most recent (and often least changed) edition of the textbook. The role these professors play in determining textbook prices is obvious.

These professors not only disallow students who took the course the previous semester to sell their books back to the monolithic bookstore, but they also require students taking the course for the first time to shell out the extra money to buy a brand new, shiny book.

But these aren’t the only professors who affect textbook prices. Many other, probably well-intentioned, professors face the dilemma of turning in their book requests for the next semester as they’re dealing with final projects, finals and submitting their grades for students from the previous semester.

This is not a rare phenomenon. According to the Aug. 21 issue of the Summer Forty-Niner, nearly 62 percent of professors fail to turn in the textbook requisition forms on time, unfairly leaving students to foot the bill. Either from their sheer lack of planning or and overwhelming influx of work, most professors simply aren’t responsive or don’t consider student finances when turning in (or failing to turn in) their list of required books to the University Bookstore.

The logic of sticking students with the bill for a professors’ lack of planning is akin to punishing the victim of a crime. Just because someone should be held accountable for something as unfortunate and tragic as high book prices doesn’t mean students should be the ones to pay for someone else’s folly.

Unfortunately, there is little that can be done on the part of the students except to choose professors wisely. A few professors have garnered reputations for excessive and often unnecessary book purchases or, the more dreaded and despicable of the two, requiring students to buy professors’ latest edition books. Consulting friends about book-heavy professors and swapping books are two ways students can cut costs during the early weeks before classes.

Also, while the University Bookstore monopolizes all textbook sales on campus, there are a few bookstores off campus and textbook Web sites including Textbooks.com and even Amazon.com, which can alleviate some of the financial strain students may be experiencing during their first week back from winter break.

Or maybe there is an administrative solution to professors’ (and ultimately students’) problems of turning in book requisition forms on time. Fines for overdue forms or spreading out the workload professors are faced with, like requiring grades later, are all feasible administrative means of lessening the unfair burden students face when returning to school.

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