By snoadmin
The following depiction is fictitious, but the Cal State Long Beach class is real. We’re not picking on the class, the department or its instructor. We chose this textbook because it’s expensive and finding the information was really, really easy.
A scene coming to a campus bookstore near you in the not so distant future could look something like this:
A well-endowed, naked, although seemingly armed student walks into the local university campus bookstore demanding “Unit Operations of Chem Engineering” by Warren McCabe and other authors. Waving a toy Uzi and hollering, “ISBN 978-0-07-284823-6,” the desperado screams, “Hurry up and get it, I’m late for class. And I want Edition 7, dammit.”
What isn’t on the page
Now that we’ve used the two staples of modern journalism — sex and violence — to capture your attention, let’s talk about money — the other special interest of news junkies.
Four weeks into a new semester, most college students are adjusted to ramen noodle diets, have paid exorbitant rent for a studio apartment and know the bus schedules and/or best bike routes to campus.
The newest generation of threadbare know-it-alls has figured out how to survive on PB & J, O’Doul’s and tap water for sustenance. They are not interested in recreation beyond playing Monopoly alone. Being frugal comes natural.
While it might be too late in this term to save most students money or time hunting for cheaper textbook options, posting the information on the old corkboard for next semester might help save a few bucks.
The chemical engineering text we offered as our example costs $196.60 new through the University Bookstore. The only used copy online runs $147.45. Through a few keystrokes, we found the same textbook new on Amazon.com for $122.35, with 10 used books selling for $25.50.
If a full-time student insists on new versions of their required course readings, and they all run in a similar price range, that student could spend nearly $2,000 per academic year.
In fact, the Government Accountability Office determined that between 1986 and 2004, textbook prices rose “186 percent, while inflation rose 72 percent,” according to the Baltimore Sun. The GAO estimates that students currently pay more than $1,000 per year and the costs will continue to rise, even after a plethora of federal mandates, such as disclosure of edition changes and unbundling that were imposed on textbook publishers.
Expanding the price hunt
There are ways to get books cheaper, as most of us know. We can hunt through Web sites like Half.com and Amazon.com and usually save some serious money — often more than half the bookstore price — especially if we buy used. The drawback with used books, though, is you’re pretty much at the mercy of the seller as to the condition of the book.
Used books are still our favorite cost-cutting method because used textbooks cut down on greenhouse gases associated with producing new books.
We’re going to blow through two other sources — the freebie approach — because they’re not highly feasible with a student body the size of CSULB’s.
The Library sometimes has a copy or two of a required text, but there are so few, they probably won’t lend them. They are for on-premises reading only.
Occasionally, professors might have an extra copy, but asking to borrow it also isn’t a practical solution, and the professor likely doesn’t want to be bombarded by 30 students asking for the single loaner.
One new possibility is textbook rental. Web sites like Chegg.com and Bookrenter.com offer students the opportunity to rent textbooks for the semester, typically, for less than half of the list price. Of course, some of these sites let students rent for shorter periods, but the risks of renting a book only for finals is inherently dangerous.
Another alternative is digital books, but this too has its pitfalls. Coursesmart.com was invented by a group of publishers that “sell” the textbook in electronic form for 180 days. You can save up to 50 percent of the original list price, but if you drop the class, you’re still on the hook for the contract price.
E-books could also end up saving students money, but this approach is still in its infancy. There aren’t a lot of high quality e-books offered, and they are not downloadable, which hampers the student’s ability to bring the text to class to take notes during lecture. E-book readers like Kindle can be more expensive than buying the paper version.
Environmental custodians ‘R’ us
Because of both economic and environmental issues, we really should be looking at other ways to cut down our textbook consumerism. Public universities have a responsibility to address both issues. One way universities can protect the environment — and student pocketbooks — is to insist that professors post the required textbook in the schedule of classes earlier to give students more time to shop around.
The problem with that, notably with recent cuts and furlough demands, is that a lot of part-time instructors, and many full-time professors, don’t know until the last minute what courses they will be teaching.
Several groups, many of them former university students, have launched textbook co-op sites, where students can swap or trade used textbooks. While this is a startup concept, it might be the wave of the future. Students helping students isn’t a bad idea.
Campus bookstores are attempting to restructure many of their business practices by increasing stocks of used books and offering rental options, but the operational overhead will not make a huge difference to the majority of students for several years.
What is certain, unless you just wish to run nude through the bookstore with a toy gun — and we will be there with a camera — is that we must turn the revolution against the high cost of textbooks into a national mission.
If even one student is forced to drop out because they can’t afford books, we lose the vast intellectual potential that individual might have brought to our communities.
