Bookstore Blues

We are being robbed.

The New York Times reports that textbook costs have nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004, rising about six percent each year. The average college student ultimately spends between $700 and $1000 per year on course texts. Coupled with the article “College Tuition Rose During Fall Semester” from The Reveille’s Oct. 29 issue, it would seem that the overall costs associated with going to college are on an ever-increasing slope.

As the informal poll of my roommates (who represent three departments) revealed, the foremost frustration comes from those courses that list books only to leave them unopened and collecting dust. Students have become savvy to Amazon, Half.com and any number of other online resources to rid themselves of these unwanted books – and often to buy them in the first place at affordable prices.

Conspicuously absent from the resources students list as most cost-efficient: university bookstores. The popular conception is that bookstores rob their students with overpriced books and insultingly low buybacks. In defense of the stores, their managers cite low profit-margins and the demands of operating as a business.

Congressmen have taken measures to make textbooks more affordable. The New York Times reported that the Higher Education Opportunity Act included $10 million for grants to support textbook rental pilot programs. I believe a new model for textbook sales can be explored by campus officials, one that changes the emphasis from profit-focused to student service.

A Nebraska Wesleyan University student began a Facebook Group in recent years for a project called the “Wesleyan Book Exchange,” which strives toward the “creation and sustainability of a healthy student-led book exchange market.” Through it, students can sell, trade and loan books to others at NWU. The fundamental flaw, as I see it, is the lack of a stable figure to coordinate these efforts and the presence of the already-dominant and centralized, University-endorsed Prairie Wolves Bookstore.

From the perspective of a non-math, non-business student, the prospect of merging the two institutions has merit. Pursuing change to lower costs seems illogical. Yet, if the NWU Bookstore can initiate competitive pricing itself, its customer-base will hypothetically increase beyond those a) too disinterested, lazy or ignorant to search out cheaper books and b) those who are forced to buy books unavailable elsewhere.

Thus, the task falls to someone who does have knowledge of business and the math involved. The challenge goes out to University officials to express interest in serving NWU students by making textbooks as affordable as possible. And the expectation is that students voice their support for change – your bank accounts already thank you.