pmoa.net

Being in school from 1997-2002, textbooks were expensive, but costs continue to rise like an old school pair of Jordans. Right now, textbook costs are rising at double the inflation rate. How can we keep up? I’m not going to go out and purchase a $190 textbook on how to program a Windows kernel. Ridiculous. Here’s what I suggest.

Remember the good old days when we got the textbook in elementary school and even if was an edition or two behind we would still use it? Well we should continue to do that now. The main excuse that professors use, is that we need to learn the newest stuff and stuff their pockets as well, if they wrote teh book. I look at this business as a monopoly of some sort. I mean, we HAVE to study and we HAVE to buy the book required by the course. I find this to be horsesh*t.

We need to go back to the signing out of books for the semester and returning them to the program. The class that the program is in should pay for the book and if you need to make notes in a book, then purchase, but if not, there are things called notebooks. When the semester is over, they can return the book to the program and they can use it for the next semester. What does the program do about the outdated books? Well, you give them to high schools or other smaller colleges at a lower cost than what they are paying for them. That way everyone wins. Or they can turn around and sell them to the student at a discounted rate. Heck, we all get screwed when we sell them back to the bookstore, especially if it is an edition behind.

So go look for the book at your local library if you can and they can probably find one for you somewhere, or a buddy from another college. There are ways around this and voice your concerns to the university, but who’s going to listen? Obvisouly, not them because they get a cut of every book that gets sold. Damn capitalism.