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`“Buy back your books!” sounds like a nice deal, but I can’t remember if I ever got a decent fraction of the cost back for the books I paid for.
As our economy continues to spiral down the drain, it seems as if the cost of textbooks is still booming.
While this may seem reasonable considering almost all courses have always required textbooks. The price these days for each book has skyrocketed over the past few years.
What used to be a dent in my pocket now leaves me with a gigantic hole. The financial burden that rests upon college students has made it extremely difficult to manage.
Let’s not forget about tuition, meal plans and housing we have to pay for, too.
I question the necessity of buying such pricey textbooks during this “economic crisis” that we all face. Especially since most of the time there is little need for the book in order to complete the course.
Some students I know aren’t able to afford many of the required textbooks and had to rely on getting the material from a friend or colleague in class.
My sympathy goes out to those of you who have to purchase those books that resemble dictionaries. It has to be nearly impossible to cover all that material in just one semester and I’ve glanced at the prices of those monstrosities. Wow. Two of those could pay for my rent next month.
In addition to this financial problem, professors continue to change the textbooks each semester. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to save money using a friend’s book, only to find that there’s a new edition out. Great.
It would be interesting to see the reaction from the parents of some students who also lend out the money for books each semester: signing that six hundred dollar check to which they hope is going towards the expected 4.0. Little do they realize that some of those books will never leave the shelf, not because their kids are just downright lazy, but more because the uses of most textbooks have became a waste of time and money.
Having to gamble between buying a book that may or may not benefit you in the course, especially when it comes to emptying the bank account, is outrageous. For professors to require a single textbook for a course costing well above a hundred dollars, then simply nixing the idea of covering the text two weeks into the semester, are you kidding me?
Sometimes you can’t even return them! If I return jeans that didn’t fit, a shirt that just didn’t go, or a bad Christmas gift from a relative, I get my money back. All of it. Not just 15 or 30 percent. The whole thing.
Not here though, you have something like a five day window to figure out the next 16 weeks or else you’re out of luck.
The bottom line is that textbooks are ridiculously over priced and fall far from their purpose in today’s college classroom.
Why am I going to buy a book from the school store when we can access the material online? Millersville’s textbook policy still looms within the dark ages; hello…we do have the internet.
To those professors who still want us to drag around a few pounds on our back each day and empty our piggy banks, I hope you reconsider.
There’s a way to get what we need out of the course without making our dorm rooms look like home libraries. Invest in an author who makes text available online, or try and limit how many books we really need.
There is hope though, I know a few professors who use textbooks that are available to download for free online.
Or, use articles on reserve from the library website. This I believe is reasonable, easily accessible and most importantly, affordable. Those of you who have started to pave the way, I salute you!
One of the most important financial decisions that we will ever make is the cost of our education. I urge our wonderful professors here at Millersville to let us turn the last page of the textbook era.
Let’s click, download and absorb this knowledge and start a new day.