Textbook money

It is a never-ending battle. College students buy expensive textbooks for classes, and then receive next to nothing when they sell them back to books stores.

Throughout the years there have been numerous ideas on how students should combat this growing problem. Web sites have been created where students can buy, sell or trade books with each other. So far, they seem to be working. It has been suggested by some, and numerous times by this page, that professors release the names of required texts to students long before classes start, giving students ample time to seek alternative and cheaper ways to keep greenbacks in their pockets. Yet despite these and other suggestions, little seems to help curb prices.

According to the State Public Interest Research Groups, the average student will spend $900 a year on textbooks. It can be argued that the value of an education is important, and that textbooks are the door to that education, so the price of books is a small price to pay. Students who have bought a $120 book for a class, only to have the professor assign just two readings from it, and then later have the book store only buy it back for $10, might see the problem from a different angle. That bookstore might then sell the same book for a much higher price.

One of the remedies that has been suggested is renting textbooks from universities. Currently there are about 20 universities and colleges in the U.S. that have implemented successful textbook rental programs. At colleges that have adopted the system, fees range from $15-$81per quarter for textbook rental. At the University of Wisconsin, textbooks are available for checkout from the university's library. According to the fees listed on multiple universities' Web sites that have implemented the rental system, students can save about $400 a year. Cutting textbook expenditures nearly in half would vastly improve the problem, allowing students to spend money on other things, such as tuition, and keep textbook costs off higher-interest credit cards.

Based on the evidence, including some from the Big Ten, Ohio State should also have a textbook rental program in place.

A criticism to the rental programs is that at research universities, such as OSU, having a textbook rental service would be useless because fields are continually changing and need updates. Textbooks in certain fields, such as calculus, change little from year to year.

During Karen A. Holbrooks' term as OSU president, a research has been emphasized. As a result, not every student or department at OSU would benefit from a textbook rental program. We understand that. But this should not stop individual colleges or departments inside the university from asking the university if it would be possible for a successful implementation, at even the smallest level, to help students save money.

On campus there are professors who make it a point to help reduce the problem by giving their students a list of needed books prior to the start of the quarter. Sadly, this is not the norm. Professors know textbook assignments long before classes start, and a mandatory date should be instituted by the university for professors to post the list of required textbooks. As far as we can see, there is no downside to this proposal.

To address those who think a textbook rental program would harm bookstores, students must realize that while it seems unfair that stores charge such high prices, it is the publishers who are profiting. Students are a captured market. We must buy textbooks or face failing classes. We are trapped. Publishers know this market phenomenon very well.

Bookstores will say that they are not the ones driving up textbook prices. This might be true, but it is irrelevant. Questions have to asked. Why is there a need to add a CD to the book and then raise the price $30? Why do textbooks not have pages devoted to describing changes that occur between editions so that prices are justified? Implementing some of these suggestions might help alleviate the ambivalence that students feel toward buying textbooks.