Well, that's my rant. Please share your feelings/experiences on the topic.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Textbooks
Though this may not be a political issue, I feel the need to rant briefly about something that all college students face: textbook prices. I just purchased the final books that I need for this semester, bringing my total to a whopping $493.29. I find this completely ridiculous and appalling. I am taking 6 classes this semester, 2 of which do not require textbooks (God bless those professors!), which means that the aforementioned total is for 4 classes. That comes out to be approximately $123 per class...ouch! Even worse is the fact that some of my friends in other majors fork out even more than that! Usually, I try to buy used books, however, when new editions are printed and selected by professors for class use, buying a used book is not an option.
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5 comments:
Have u check the discount online bookstore
http://www.cocomartini.com/
the textbooks there are BRAND NEW and 60%off discount price.
I buy all my semester’s textbooks from there.
hehe ^_^
I had never heard of that before. Thanks for the suggestion though! I will certainly check that out for next semester! :)
Any issue can certainly be political. This is especially true at a public university. The state assembly could limit the profit that the bookstore or the publisher could make on public university students.
Or a coalition of students could lobby bookseller or Congress to pass educational reform that could lower book prices or supplement educational expenses to lower book prices.
Mike
As everyone says, politics are involved in EVERYTHING. You have to wonder how much profit the universities do make on the books. The only problem with buying them online is you have a sizable amount invested in postage unless you can get them all at one place and then you always worry if you will get ripped off.I know at VT they use the profits for scholarships, but the prices are still ridiculous. I like Mike's ideas about getting the General Assembly's help. When you figure tuition, room and board, you need to add an additional thousand bucks to that total per year for books. Can you take that off your income taxes?
The problem with limiting the profit on books is that the bookstore has expenses that must be covered by the markup.
The GA could pass a law that banned bookstores from making a profit; but then they would just find more deductions to offset their revenue.
The best thing the GA did to lower book prices was requiring professors to let you know ahead of time what books you needed, so you have more time to find them at lower prices. The only problem is, I never saw that get enforced when I was at VT.
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