Textbook or Checkbook?

Photo by Tanaha Simon.

After three-and-a-half semesters in college, you would think that purchasing books would cease to be a difficult or confusing process. Yet every September and January I end up staring at the shelves of the bookstore and, after marveling at the absurdity of the prices, thinking to myself: am I really going to buy these?

Books are arguably one of college’s peskiest expenses, costing most students an average of $1,168 over four years, according to the College Board. It’s hard to look up the “required texts” section on course listings without a certain sense of dread, especially when the total price of books necessary for one class can be a couple hundred bucks. Biology majors, such as Kerry Dermody ’12, have it particularly hard. “For organic chemistry alone, I’ve spent over 250 dollars for that one class: two textbooks and an answer manual,” she said. “For all of my science classes, each textbook costs an average of 100 dollars.  A lot of times you don’t use them that often.” That’s an awful lot for books she’ll probably only need for a few months. Many of these books are new editions, which means used ones are not always available. Some students choose to rent, but this isn’t even an option for textbooks that come with worksheets, CDs or one-use codes that link to a website. Professors that utilize these features in their curriculum leave their students with little choice other than purchasing the full-price book.

I won’t pretend that a significant part of my hesitation at the bookstore has nothing to do with my own limited budget, but there’s more to it than that. Obviously, if I need something for a class, then I’m going to get it. The question is, will I even receive it in time? Let’s take one of my own classes as an example. There are three required books for this class, each one priced at a relatively modest sum. Now, one of these books was not available at the bookstore on the day that I purchased the other two I needed. While standing in line, the manager of the bookstore approached me and asked if I had found everything I needed. After informing her that one of my books was missing, she offered me a kind of pre-order form that guarantees me a copy of the book when it arrives—if I paid in advance. Thinking to myself, “Well, I suppose there’s no difference if I pay now or pay later,” I left my comfortable spot in line and was led to the forms, which estimated that the books would arrive the next day. Once I got there, however, I hesitated. Did I really need to spend money now? Couldn’t I just wait until the book actually arrived? I changed my mind at the last minute and decided to wait.

Now, let’s skip ahead to the next week, when I’m sitting in class and the professor informs us that this required book isn’t currently available for purchase at the bookstore and might not be for another four to six weeks. He suggested that we buy it online instead. One girl asked him what we should do if we had already ordered the book from the bookstore. There’s really only one answer to that question: she either had to buy another copy of the book or try and cancel her pre-order, which is a hassle.

I can breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t spend money pre-ordering the book and can simply order it online instead, but what about people that pre-ordered and now have to wait four to six weeks? The bookstore claims that they will refund students in situations like this, but let’s say thirty students enroll for a class that has zero copies of the book at the bookstore. All of them pre-order books and then five of them drop the class. Then what? Does the bookstore lose money?
I think the source of the problem here is not necessarily the bookstore itself, but rather the way in which we discover what books we need and how we go about buying them. Any student can look up what books a class requires on Self Service, but this isn’t always a reliable source of information. This semester one of my classes simply did not have the required readings listed. The same thing happened to me last semester and I did not know what books would be necessary until I was staring the syllabus in the face. For students who need to plan their budget in advance, this can be incredibly stressful. Imagine having to drop a class at the last minute because you can’t afford the books. Why doesn’t the school simply have the professor put the syllabus up on the website beforehand? This would allow students to know not only what books they will need to buy well in advance, but also whether or not they even want to take the course at all.

Other colleges have already found a solution to this problem. At Yale University, students have a shopping period at the beginning of each semester, in which students are able to browse classes before actually enrolling in them. Sometimes the only way to know whether or not you should take a class is by attending it. As it stands now, our own add/drop and limited add/drop periods can still allow students to slip through the cracks. If a system similar to Yale and other colleges was implemented here at Conn, it would prevent people from needlessly buying books for classes that aren’t suited to them.

Not everyone can afford to spend half a grand on textbooks at the last minute, and nobody can afford to miss a month’s worth of reading and expect to do well in a course. Even popular alternative sources of textbooks like Amazon.com, while noticeably cheaper than the bookstore, have pros as well as cons. Without expedited shipping, books can take weeks to arrive, not to mention shipping and handling quickly adds up. Buying books is irritating enough; the least the school can do is reliably update Self Service so that students are able to know, in advance, what they’re going to need and when they’re going to need it.•