| The textbook fee conspiracy |
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| Written by Dana Narconis | |
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Am I the only student on this campus that actually begins to feel ill when handing over their student ID card or credit card to the bookstore cashier when purchasing textbooks at the start of each semester? I hope not, because with current tuition fees already sky high, you would think they could at least give us a break on textbooks. Personally, I can think of about two billion ways I would rather spend three to four hundred dollars every six months. Textbook fees are an obvious ploy for universities across America to rake in even more cash from students already so far in debt they will be paying off school loans until they are eighty! As if it were not enough, we are often told to purchase books that are seldom and sometimes never used in a particular course. Reading five pages out of a textbook is hardly worth losing $50-$100. The university’s idea of compensation is to merely allow us to sell our books back to them for a less than adequate refund. Although this may seem ethical, I often find that I cannot return many of my books because the school has decided to change editions. This means not only is it impossible to sell the book back to the school, but it is also impossible to sell it to another student for future use. You then have to resort to selling the book online, in which you will most likely receive significantly less for it than selling it by any other means. On average, textbook prices increase at a rate of about six percent every year. Recent studies show that these increasing costs are associated with materials that are made to accompany the book, such as CD-ROMs and workbooks. Sixty-five percent of professors report on general surveys that they rarely or never use the bundled materials that go along with the actual textbook. Seventy-six percent of faculty report that the changing of textbook editions is not justifiable; meaning the only reason for switching is to require us to spend even more money. I find it hard to believe that there are not more acts taking place to help bring the costs of textbook fees down, or even offer less expensive alternatives to buying every single book. Why not offer a supplement including new information not found in the textbook as an option, instead of producing an entire new edition? Offering online textbooks, where the student pays a smaller fee to download the material onto their computer, would be an extremely economically wise alternative. This would eliminate high prices for students, as well as significantly lower the retail cost of textbooks. I become so frustrated with textbook fees sometimes that I refuse to buy the book at all. This obviously does not make the coursework any easier! You know something needs to be done when textbook fees interfere with your ability to complete your homework and sufficiently study for tests. |
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