Claire Thixton
Staff Writer
According to data released by Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), textbook wholesale prices have raised at least three times the rate of inflation over the last two decades. This may not come news to students, who say on average they spend anywhere between $300-700 on textbooks per semester. From paying for their college education to affording the inflating textbook prices, students are using every means necessary to get by.
There are many factors that contribute to the rise in textbook prices, but there are two significant reasons, according to a background study done by the University of Michigan in 2009. First, the revision cycles for textbooks are relatively short, limiting student’s ability to sell back their books at full cost. The article claims that newer editions cost approximately 50 percent more than older editions. The second more recent trend for the rise of textbook prices is the bundling of additional instructional materials with textbooks. Combined, these two factors have helped contribute to the rise in costs. Still, this does not eliminate the concerns of U students who are breaking the bank when it comes to their books.
“One book’s price is half the price of taking one credit hour at the U,” Freeha Rana, a junior in biology said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Rana said she spends anywhere from $400-700 on textbooks in a given semester, depending on her course load.
“I buy books online because they are cheaper than the bookstores. I save a lot. I bought my organic chemistry lab manual online for $7 when at the bookstore it was $24,” Rana said.
Anthony Quach, a senior in chemical engineering, suggests renting textbooks as an additional way for students to save money.
“Buying or renting [textbooks] depends on whether [the] subjects are important and if the book can be reused as reference in the future or not,” Quach said.
He agrees that most textbooks are overpriced, stating that they were “way too big and covered much more details than necessary for a subject.”
Loan Truong, a sophomore in Pre-Nursing, adds “I think textbooks can be way too expensive, and we barely even use them.”
The campus bookstore seems to ring to the same tune as students. Shane Girton, a 14-year employee and the associate director of the store, also agrees that textbooks are too pricey.
“I believe for the most part that textbooks are extremely expensive. A lot of it boils down to what the value of that textbook is. If a student pays for a textbook and that textbook is used for the entire course, it is certainly still expensive, but at least there is a high value because it helps in the class,” Girton said. “But when a student has to pay $150 for a textbook and there’s only two chapters used out of the book, then yes, that is extremely unproductive for the students.”
Girton said that while a substantial amount of students still purchase their textbooks through the college bookstore, numbers have gone down significantly over the past decade. For every dollar that a textbook sells for, the bookstore makes approximately 4.5 cents profit.
“All the revenue that is generated by our store goes directly back to the university,” Girton said. “The bookstore receives no funding from student fees or taxes.”
He said the bookstore is trying to provide as many resources as possible for students to save money on their textbooks. The Compare-and-Save program, which was launched just last year by the store, aims to direct students to find the best prices for the resources they need for their classes.
“I think it is a great tool for students to help them find the best price for a book, or to at least find out if a book at our store is within the price range that they can afford,” Girton said.
Approximately 60 percent of the University bookstore’s textbooks are available as rentals. About 50 percent of the textbooks are used. The national average, according to Girton, for a store the size of the U’s is 27 percent.