As I casually strolled through the bookstore looking for the endless number of textbooks required for my four very demanding classes this quarter, I nearly had a heart attack.
The prices I came upon for nearly every book were a crock. I don’t know about everyone else, but I am a starving college student who simply cannot afford to pay nearly $400 for books that I have not, and will not, use in the near future.
Yes, I agree that books are the key to our education, and reading is fundamental to our future, but couldn’t they cost a little bit less than the horrendous, eye-popping, hair pulling prices they have now?
According to studies that I have personally done with friends, roommates and classmates here at UCSD, the average college student with 12 to 18 units has an average book cost of $200 per quarter. This, I may add, includes the cost of so-called “”used”” books.
I myself paid around that much my first quarter, about $50 more my second quarter, and I do not even want to mention how much I will have to pay this quarter, with the 7 books that are required for my classes.
With this financial problem at hand, it is no wonder that many students resort to not taking a particular class because of the high cost of books, or are forced to keep renewing the same book at the library so they don’t actually have to buy it. We should even be so lucky most of the time.
It is evident that the book cost on campus seems to get higher and higher as time goes by. While some classes require books that are newly revised and cost around $90, other classes require you to buy five books, which add up to around $100. The amount of money a college student has to pay for books, especially at a quarter-based school where we have to do it three times around, is absolutely absurd.
It seems to me that there is some kind of money-making scheme that the school is planning to profit from books that college students simply can’t afford. Where exactly does the rest of our money go when a book priced at $80 is actually worth $40? And why don’t professors, booksellers and the school understand the fact that we are students who need as much financial help as possible?
As if tuition and room and board were not bad enough, the cost of books has given us added financial pressure that we really do not need. It is sad that we have to pay so much and be cheated from an institution that we greatly depend on for a higher education
Now some may be thinking, “”Well there are always the used books, right?”” Wrong. More and more professors are tossing out the old editions of books and requiring new editions the added features of which, usually, aren’t used. Add the fact that when it comes to used books, the early bird catches the worm. Come one day late, and they are probably all gone. With all of these obstacles in place, it is no wonder that most students wind up buying new books at the full price.
Another dilemma comes at the end of the quarter, when we have the opportunity to actually sell back the books we’ve bought, and for some of us, barely even used.
Yes, we all know that little booth in the Price Center that takes those deadly weapons we call our study tools and gives us back a whole dollar-and-a-half for some textbook that we have spent our life savings on. When it comes to selling back our used books, we are again faced with the fact that the editions we might have bought are going to be replaced the next quarter, and are worth nothing. We are left out of money, and out of a textbook about something we never understood in the first place. Sound familiar?
Whining and bitching aside, it is obvious that we really can’t do anything about how the textbooks are priced and how we can make them cheaper. What we can do, however, is resort to other ways of getting our required books without having to spend our savings.
Books are almost always put on reserve in the library by professors, and some are even available on the shelves. You can always check out a book from the library, renew it when you can, and return it whenever you are done.
If you really want the book to be actually yours, you can always go to Web sites such as http://www.half.com where books are often much cheaper than their counterparts at the bookstore. There is also the Co-op, where some books are available for a few bucks cheaper. With these resources at hand, you don’t have to pull your hair out every time you step foot in the bookstore.
It is sad to say that high school days are long gone — days in which books came free, and the only money we spent was for the paper bags to cover them with.
For now though, we are forced to pay an astonishing amount of money for textbooks, we have few other choices, since it is part of the package we agreed upon when entering college.
Indeed, there are other options we can take when it comes to books at high prices, but we do need them and they do expand our knowledge. Hopefully, with some miracle, books will be free for us college students someday (and pigs will fly) but until then, open up those wallets and expect to have your very own library!
