Something Is Not Right

Posted on August 10, 2009
Filed Under Column as I See 'Em, money | By Ashley Singh

College textbooksSo I had to buy books again and when I was on my bookstore’s website, I discovered that I have to buy 12 books: four for philosophy, two for science, three for French, and two for anthropology. I know, bummer, right? Definitely. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from buying books over the years, it’s research, reasearch, research. I came to that conclusion after spending $500 of my dad’s money in one shot at the bookstore freshman year. I now use eBay, Amazon, textbooks.com (if you buy a book from this site, they have a guaranteed buyback on it), and half.com.

One of my French books costs $104.75 at the school bookstore (which I bought on Amazon for $32.25) and another costs $131.50 in the school bookstore (which I bought on textbooks.com for $85.75). My dad and I spent $232.63 buying online. Had we bought all of my books in the bookstore, we would have spent $484.85.

So in coming up with this week’s blog, I read an article on Unigo about buying college textbooks. It says that the average student spends $900 a year on textbooks! That’s ridiculous. The article led me to the U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), which stands up to powerful special interests on behalf of the American public. They did something which I think is kind of amazing. According to their website, U.S. PIRG representatives recently met with U.S. Department of Education staff to discuss a new website that will help faculty and students get accurate textbook pricing from textbook publishers. The website is a result of the passage of HR 4137, the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which requires publishers to disclose textbook pricing and to offer textbooks and supplemental material “unbundled.” HR 4137 also asks colleges to provide the list of assigned textbooks, including prices, for each course when students are registering for classes. This plan is called the College Opportunity and Affordability Act. It would “require publishers to disclose pricing information upfront to faculty, requires publishers to offer textbooks and supplemental materials ‘unbundled,’ and requires institutions to…provide prices and ISBNs…of textbooks when students register for classes.”

Personally, I think this is slightly revolutionary. I’m not in any way shooting down the bookstore. I’m shooting down the fact that students are basically being robbed blind by their college bookstores, and it’s not fair that we have to spend time researching online for affordable books. All I’m saying is something is not right and I hope that with this plan, things will change.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Comments

Leave a Reply




Security Code: