College Textbook Costs

[alum]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines


I'm older than the hills, but I remember budgeting about $100 per class for books a couple of decades ago.

[GeekyPenguin]

The costs of books is just insane - for my constitutional law class last year we had to buy the text (around $110, I think) and then a supplementary book that was only 200 pages long and was $40. Ridiculous.

[Drolefille]

*cough* bigwords.com I get all my books from there

[KSUViolet06]

I'm an English major so I end up having to buy alot of books. There was one semester I spent almost $500 on books for 5 classes because every class had at least 5-10 or more books each.

[shinerbock]

I averaged about 400 per sem undergrad, so while law school first year was about 750, that was for the entire year. Of course, with supplements it goes to about 800.

[OleMissGlitter]

Well since I was on the 6 year plan....each year was different since I changed my major so much. I would have to say that my final major which my degree is in, was the most expensive. (English). I had a bunch of professors who would only have our books at the local bookstore Sqaure Books and they mark their books up big time. They did this since Barnes & Noble owns our bookstore on campus and they wanted to support their local bookstore. I probably would spend about $500 a semester and when I would go to sell my books back I would maybe get $20 bucks. One time when I was returning a book they told me the value was 25 cents, I was like I'll keep that one!

Check out this article:
http://www.thedmonline.com
Then go down a little and you'll see something about textbooks....I am not good at linking their stories because they usually don't work

[carnation]

Originally Posted by alum

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines


I'm older than the hills, but I remember budgeting about $100 per class for books a couple of decades ago.

Me too-- and as the mother of 5 college students, I think that the price of textbooks is obscene. But what kills me as a professor is when my students ask if we get kickbacks from the sale of the books and that's why they're so expensive. Yeah, right! We wish!

We rarely have much of a choice in textbooks--they're ALL expensive. Why do these companies include a CD in their Spanish book package? The students never have time to use them nor do we.

[GeekyPenguin]

Originally Posted by carnation

Me too-- and as the mother of 5 college students, I think that the price of textbooks is obscene. But what kills me as a professor is when my students ask if we get kickbacks from the sale of the books and that's why they're so expensive. Yeah, right! We wish!

We rarely have much of a choice in textbooks--they're ALL expensive. Why do these companies include a CD in their Spanish book package? The students never have time to use them nor do we.

Most of my professors have written the texts we use, so they do get a kickback.

[Munchkin03]

In college, I'd normally spend $300/semester and get about $80 back at the end of the semester. Granted, I only sold back about half of my books.

In grad school, we all had packets, so maybe I spent about $200/semester. I kept all of those books and use them regularly in my work.

[ufdale]

I spent around $650 this semester on books! (these are not books for the whole year, just a semester) I'm an English major and for one class alone I had 16 books to buy! They also were VERY uncommon books (middle english) that were super expensive. The teacher said that he's been teaching this same class with the same texts for 15 years. Too bad he could arrange a trade off where I give the next class my books or something like that. My three english classes had 41 texts and then I still had to buy for my other classes.
I tried buying books online, but I've had too too many bad experiences. This semester I recieved an "uncut book". I literally had to cut the pages apart because they were one big piece of paper that is folded into pages. I ended up not even reading the book because it was such a hassle.
I must say that I about cried when I recieved that credit card bill...

[sunnyhibiscus]

This semester, I have spent a total of $400 on books, but I have a feeling that it will get much worse because I've heard that many instuctors will use new books.

And the worst part in all this. When you do buy backs for your books, you get five stinkin' dollars for a book you spend $93 on. I understand that they will be using a new one the next semester, but still...

[alum]

Originally Posted by carnation

Me too-- and as the mother of 5 college students, I think that the price of textbooks is obscene. But what kills me as a professor is when my students ask if we get kickbacks from the sale of the books and that's why they're so expensive. Yeah, right! We wish!

Kickbacks, I mean royalties, only incur if the professors happened to have authored the books that they assign. I remember THAT happening a couple of times.

We just have one kid in college right now and her books were close to $700 for the semester.

[nikki1920]

check with your teacher about which edition you can use. you can sometimes use the library for free books. and also, unless I know the book will be used the following semester, I just keep the book.

[RaggedyAnn]

A silver lining-places like Houghton Mifflin Books are working on software that will enable students to buy chapters of a book, instead of buying the whole thing. I wish they had that when I was buying books and the professor was using 3 chapters!

[nikki1920]

I HATED THAT!!!

Or what we used to have to get was a Coursepack. The professor would have these random articles, chapters, etc. bound in a pack and we'd have to pay for that separately. I had one for a class that was thick as a book and cost $150.

I swear, colleges make a good chunk of money off of books alone.