| | Issue #20.50 :: 12/12/2007 - 12/18/2007 | Taking the Sting Out of Sticker Shock
New Student-Led Services Help Keep Textbook Costs In Check
| BY MINDY LUCAS
| Outside of cafeteria-style campus food and cramped living quarters, it’s one of the oldest complaints from college students everywhere: the costs of textbooks, particularly the “buy back” value at the end of the semester.
“It can be a shock,” says USC junior Amanda Wolff. Trying to sell back two of her textbooks at the University Bookstore on Friday, Wolff was informed the store would only buy one — and that for the paltry sum of $7.
“But that’s not bad considering, I think I paid, $13 for it,” she says, explaining that the other book was rejected because the publisher had issued a new edition.
New editions, bundled sets and extraneous materials are just a few of the culprits driving up textbook costs, says USC student body president Nick Payne. But Payne says professors could exercise more influence on publishers in controlling costs. And there are other cost-controlling options, too, including online book-trading sites and the purchase of used books.
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| Brian Mesimer, freshman, enters the University Bookstore on the USC campus. Photo by Jonathan Sharpe |
Bundled textbooks often come with much more than just the book; they can be packaged with supplemental reading materials, CD-ROMs or other software, even something called a “clicker,” a device students use to respond to a professor’s question or survey of the class. Such extras can provide a professor with immediate feedback on where the class stands on an issue or if students are learning the material. The only problem is, Payne says, most professors don’t have or use the software that enables the clickers.
“In fact, according to research done by PIRG [Public Interest Research Group], 65 percent of professors surveyed don’t use the extra material that comes in the bundled versions,” Payne says.
So how do students get stuck with the bundled books in the first place? According to Payne, it goes back to communication between the professors ordering the books and the publishers who market them.
“Quite possibly, they [professors] play the largest role in determining textbook costs,” Payne says.
So much so that USC’s student body government has developed a pamphlet meant to educate professors on their role in influencing textbook prices. The pamphlet includes such tips as turning order forms in on time so students have more time to comparison shop and avoiding bundled textbooks and frequent ordering of new editions.
“That’s a really big one,” Payne says, explaining that quite often, the only change to the textbook from one year to the next might be in its photography or visuals. “For one of my courses, I had a book that was like $180. It was a fifth edition … I went on Ebay and [for] a fourth edition it was $3.99,” he says.
Payne says the pamphlet is designed to encourage professors to ask questions of the publishers or to consider how their class is set up. “Maybe just give [students] fair warning that the textbook will only be used as an extra lesson outside of the class if you’re not planning on using it or if you’re planning on relying mostly on supplemental materials.”
In addition to getting professors on board, a new service at USC called Textbook Turnstile might help take some of the sting out of textbook sticker shock. For any textbook that costs $100 or more — or for those classes comprised of 100 or more students — the Thomas Cooper Library will purchase a copy of that course’s book and have it on reserve at the library.
For the first time this semester, students also have the option to buy and sell their books directly to each other using a new online student-run service called scbookexchange.com. Similar in concept to Amazon.com or other online bookstores, the book exchange differs from the mega-stores by matching would-be buyers directly to sellers. Since there’s no middleman, it can make a difference to a student’s overall budget.
The online book exchange, invented by a University of Kentucky student, doesn’t seem to have campus bookstores worried.
According to Andy Shaffer, manager of the Russell House University Bookstore housed in the ground floor of the University Union, more than 8,000 students ordered books for early pick-up from the store’s web site last fall.
“We are building services that cater to their shopping needs, and they are responding,” Shaffer says, adding that the store offers a variety of incentives to induce students to order early.
He says while the store saw several years of “higher than inflation increases,” it has since experienced a leveling off of textbook prices.
“We do our part to take ownership of the book prices by doing everything we can to make used books available to our students. A used book saves a student 25 percent off the cost of a new book and when that book is readopted for the future term that student can get half back for that book.” | |
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