Loading ...
`Once upon a time there were many magical, mythical universities that provided their students booklists ahead of time.
In doing so, the students were given both the opportunity to purchase their textbooks used and read for classes in advance and prepare accordingly.
Students were then able to save money on books because buying used is always cheaper than buying new from university stores on campus.
Those fortunate students could then use that money they saved on things like food, rent, car insurance bills and the like.
There was one university called Millersville, however, that decided not to allow its students the privilege of the much esteemed booklist.
Instead, the only ways its students could obtain the titles of their books was to e-mail every professor on their schedules and hope that they responded in good time, get lucky every once in a while and find the titles on MyVille, or find the titles after painstakingly scouring the Millersville website. In most cases maybe two or three professors would respond; which is commendable considering they have their own workloads and personal lives to worry about.
So, the students resigned to finding out the book titles of their remaining classes by going into the University Store. Unfortunately for them, by the time the store first opened at the beginning of every semester it was too late to order and receive used books online before classes started.
Also unfortunate, for some reason there were a scant number of used books throughout the store so that students could not even buy used books there.
Sometimes multiple books were even bound together in saran wrap so that they could not be bought used in the store. With fate seeming to be pitted against them, defeated and soon-to-be broke, students paid the full price for their textbooks. Seriously though, why doesn’t Millersville offer booklists?
Most other colleges and universities do, why should Millersville students have to bend over backwards trying to find out what their textbooks are? Why should Millersville professors have to read through hundreds of e-mails that ask for textbook titles? Most importantly, why is it that with this system Millersville students have to pay full price or they will not get their textbooks in time for class?
The Millersville chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (MU SDS) has a petition floating around asking Millersville to require its professors to make a booklist two weeks in advance.
I suggest that all students looking to save on textbooks sign the petition and pass it on so that this student unfriendly system can change.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I was notified by every professor this semester with a list of required books. Some were more than 2 weeks ahead of time. Also, depending on what sites you buy your books from, it is possible to get your books delivered in 3 days. Even if they are not there for the first day of classes, how many classes use their text books the first week of classes? I’m sure Math majors do, but being an English major, most of them do not. The first week consists of getting a syllabus and going over it. Plus, most professors understand that students do purchase their books online and purposely make their first week of class more of a lecture than bookwork.
I used to email all my professors and never had more than one (if any!) respond back to me in a timely fashion.
I like the idea of a booklist, which by the way there is already one for the Govt and Politics dept, because then we don’t have to worry about sending and receiving multiple emails to/from professors. I have also had classes where we did need to read for the second day of class which occurs in the first week of the semester.
This semester I was lucky enough to have one professor email over a week ahead of time to let us know about our needed book… Many profs that have become aware of this actually support the idea and perhaps have taken some of their time to send out a mass email prior to class.
Many other colleges including West Chester and Drexel have booklists available to all the students on their campuses.
Why not us?
Yes but other school do not have an exclusive relationship with Student Services Inc… Book lists are done at least 6 weeks before classes begin so that the bookstore can order titles.
Once upon another time there was a used bookstore in this town that sold textbooks… quickly this store was not permited to receive the book lists of MU professors and competition was prohibited… I am sure that the Snapper archives have these tales….