Students throw textbook tantrums
With an ever-rising tuition, and a suffering economy, the one place students cannot expect to find a stimulus-driven financial break is textbooks.
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Like those whose account is payed gradually in installments or those who receive scholarships to cover books and other expenses the bookslip process in itself can be a blessing to some.
However, for students who have a remaining tuition balance on their account and have to pay out of pocket for things such as meal plans and bookslips, the process is not only costly, but downright inefficient.
The bookslips basically mandate where students can purchase their books. The money on an account can only be spent in the on-campus bookstore, instead of more cost-effective book vendors such as Amazon.com, Ed McKay, or even Chegg.com, where students can now rent textbooks semesterly or yearly. According to Chegg’s site, they’ve saved students over $117 million off the list price of new textbooks. The books are sent within days over UPS, and can be returned for free after the rental period expires. Not to mention all books come with a 30-day full-refund guarantee, something the university bookstore does not offer to students who have dropped courses after purchasing their textbooks.
After polling 35 random students, it was found that the average student is only purchasing three to four books from the bookstore, and have resorted to sharing and/or borrowing other required books from friends.
Students who were able to utilize external vendors spent only an average of $267 and reportedly purchased all required texts, an average of about six books per student.
“I feel bad for my mom,” said Brian Barrows, a senior PGM student. “I only bought one book this semester to save her some money.”
So how much money are students actually spending at the bookstore? This semester, students seem to be cutting back on their book buying with an average of $445, down from $627 last semester.
“Publishers are trying to make books to be used for classes that are spread over two terms,” said Larry Smith, the university bookstore manager. “They say the price of paper keeps going up, so the books are more expensive, but they don’t offer just the online content for a fair price. It’s not fair to students.”
Smith also says that professors who constantly change and upgrade the edition of the required class texts make it impossible for students to sell back the books for any sort of a profit, even at online and off-campus vendors.
In an attempt to assist students in saving money on texts, Smith offers students a large inventory binder, where they can look up the required text for each course, record the ISBN number, and search for it at a lower price... that is, if they are not stuck using a university bookslip.
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