Overpriced textbooks: how to deal with reading lists

By Ben Haugmo

benhaugmo@yahoo.com

It is by now widely accepted that the price of college textbooks is too high. I’ve heard horror stories of single volumes ranging in price from $100 to $300, which are then barely opened over the course of the semester.

Luckily, alternatives exist. Students rarely have to purchase brand new books anymore, thanks to online vendors and rental programs. There’s a growing trend of utilizing free online resources in lieu of traditional textbooks. In some cases, students find they don’t even need to purchase books to make the grade.

As a writing major, the cost of any one book has never placed too much of a strain on my wallet. The sum total can be painful to look at, but I consider myself lucky that my short story anthology and poet’s handbook only come to about $40. Compared to the hefty tolls supposedly placed upon my math and science peers, that’s not so bad.

I’ll also admit I’ve been renting from the bookstore at my native Concordia College for the better part of my four years here.The bookstore is convenient and allows me to avoid any shipping errors that might keep textbooks from arriving when classes start.

I’ve got a semester to go at Concordia and have so far had a lucky break as far as textbook prices go.

Obviously, if we’re going to discuss alternatives to purchasing from the bookstore, we’re going to have to look outside of my limited perspective. Amy Loftness is a nursing student who has had little use for the bookstore during her time entrenched in higher learning.

“I don't use the campus bookstore really at all,” said Loftness. “I don't think the prices are realistic and the ‘book buyback’ isn’t worth it. My friend did that and got $2 back for a $200 textbook, which he never used, since he dropped the class and it was too late to return it. I use websites to compare rental and selling prices.”

Loftness’ recommendation is BookScouter.com, a website which collects information on where books are sold and then lists vendor information. BookScouter also allows users to sell their books back to vendors, much like a campus buy-back program.

Before he graduated last year, education major Ben Haseltine used SlugBooks. This service also allows users an easy way to see multiple textbook vendors and prices, from Amazon to Chegg.

Alternatively, you could always choose to just not buy a textbook at all. Students looking to avoid spending money on textbooks can employ patience and careful syllabus-forecasting to determine whether or not they will need assigned materials.

“The education department had some expensive texts,” said Haseltine, “but we hardly used those most of the time so I just didn't buy them and would take the hit to my grade on the occasional assignment because of that.”

Sometimes readers have no choice but to purchase books packaged alongside extra cyber age fluff. Access codes and CDs can lock students out of required digital media, such as online assignments and quizzes.

On a class-by-class basis, hard copies and digital content can be bought separately, but in more unfortunate instances, students have no choice but to buy both materials, one of which that they might not need.

Ben Stubbs is an environmental studies major who has been burned in the past by required digital media. “I had to get additional software with a chemistry book my sophomore year, so that I could do online quizzes and readings. Because of the CD requirement, I couldn't get a slightly older, cheaper edition because it didn't come with the software.”

Stubbs has made a point of cross-referencing Amazon when textbook shopping. For his classes this year, he discovered that the prices online were comparable to the bookstore.

Professors understand that books can get expensive and will work with students to try and not break the bank. Dr. William Todt, a biology professor at Concordia, has two ways of selecting textbooks for his classes.

For courses taught in multiple sections by different instructors, some collaboration has to be done to choose which book to use. The group of professors attempts to pick a book that they know they will use for multiple years so that used copies can begin circulating and go down in price.

When Todt is teaching on his own, sometimes he doesn’t assign a textbook. “For classes that I’m the only teacher in, and that’s about half of my load, where I’m the primary instructor, I pick the textbook that I think is best for the material, the way that I cover it. In one of my upper division classes right now, I don’t even have a textbook for them to buy. I have a bio lab manual, because it has pictures and descriptions of all the stuff that I talk about.”

So why are textbooks so expensive? The fact that publishing is overseen by an oligopoly can’t be helping matters. Chris Sweeney of Boston Magazine reported in September that 80% of textbook publishing is controlled by only five companies, allowing for unprecedented control over how books are priced.

Publishers make most of their money by selling new editions of textbooks every two to four years, but it’s thanks to the rise of online vendors and other alternatives that they are having to change their tactics, sometimes with less than positive results.

McGraw-Hill recently ran a campaign encouraging its customers to post about their “#usedtextbookproblems.” The bid to undermine the competition backfired, of course. The only problem followers were having was finding space for the money they were saving.

Another sign of trouble for the leading powers of textbook publishing is the rise of open educational resources, or OER, materials which are by design free for access and use by learners. OER are either works already in the public domain or introduced with a free license. The University of Massachusetts Amherst launched its Open Education Initiative to encourage professors to make use of OER in their courses.

Until open educational resources become more widespread, students will have to make do with searching for the best deals on used textbooks. Fortunately, there are plenty of options beyond the campus bookstore.