MONEY! (You know, the introduction to Trump’s “Apprentice”…)

I am nearly finished buying my books for the Spring semester of 2007. If I bought completely new books from the Cornell Store, my cost would be $607. If I bought the best possible combination of new & used, it would take a whopping decrease down to $578.94. Beautiful, isn’t it? On Friday, I spent $203.20 in the Cornell Store on a total of three books that I could not get anywhere else. One packet published by Cornell for my Hebrew class ($12.25), one shrink-wrapped set of books for my music class ($153), and one random book for my “Politics of the European Union” class ($37.95). Sometimes, I feel physical pain when I leave that place. It is simply awful.

This evening, I went on Amazon armed with my booklist and the course syllabus for two other classes. I managed to save $43.30 given the most optimistic outlook of the CUstore and $52.25 if I had gone all new with the store. So, I spent $186.85 instead of over $230. Plus, that is free 2-day shipping with my free trial of “Amazon Prime” which I will cancel as soon as I order the books for my last class.

Online shopping is a beautiful thing, but it really doesn’t excuse the horrific prices of college textbooks (which is why I gave you that information overload concerning my book prices).

This article from the Burlington Free Press is titled, “Shopping for College Textbooks? Better bring your checkbook.” Ha, I would rephrase that, “Better bring your credit card,” because seriously, after tuition and travel expenses, does the average college student really have enough in their checking account to pay for over $500 worth of books? I sure don’t.

This is really the kicker,

“College textbook prices have risen at twice the rate of annual inflation over the last two decades,” states a 2005 report by the U.S. Government Accounting Office. Since December 1986, college textbook prices nearly tripled, increasing 186 percent.

The cost of tuition and fees at four-year public institutions rose even faster — 240 percent — during that period, according to the report. For an undergraduate at a college such as UVM, the annual cost for textbooks pales beside the bill for tuition — nearly $10,000 a year for in-state residents, almost $25,000 for out-of-staters.

And it only gets worse for private institutions. This is insane, but are there really any plausible solutions? There are always web vendors such as Amazon.com, Half.com, and others.

Then, there’s legislation. According to the LA Times (America’s favorite source of tinfoil hat “journalists”), there are a few possible remedies:

• Eliminate the 5 percent sales tax on textbooks.

• Obtain licensing rights that would allow school libraries to reprint certain chapters of books that students will be able to buy instead of the entire book.

This is already done on a smaller scale, Salt says.

• Work with publishers to review cases where textbooks can be sold separately from supplemental materials.

Publishers sometimes bundle textbooks with instructional aids, such as CD-ROMs, but some students don’t use the extra materials, Salt says. And bundling books with supplements that can only be used once could make it impossible to resell those materials later, experts say.

• Encourage faculty to look critically at whether new editions are necessary, and to make their book lists for the coming semester available to students and bookstores early.

All of these are great ideas. And I am definitely no economist, but these suggestions don’t seem to interfere too badly with the natural process of capitalism. After all, students are already taking it into their own hands to some extent by supporting cheaper businesses with their purchases (a little supply and demand logic left over from my Econ 102 class). Eliminating a tax is always a sensational idea. Obtaining licensing rights seems fair… costs the school some pennies but saves the students major dollars. (To be fair, Cornell does do this to a pretty good extent. The professors just seem to use that and then make the students buy more books.) Working with publishers? I don’t really have any problems with bundled materials in government, but I am sure that would be helpful to my science major friends who are often forced to purchase useless CDs with their books.

I think the most essential idea is to “encourage faculty,” which is really not an issue of legislation outside of student governments. Honestly, when I have 9 required books for one single class, ranging in price from $12.99 to $25, something is wrong. This is a case where being a little more selective is necessary. Maybe choose a few very important books to require, then choose a few important chapters from each of the others to put on reserve with the libraries.

As for making the book lists available earlier, that’s all a nice idea, but without the ISBN what good is it? As of yet, Cornell simply provides a partial title and author (as many characters fit in their little list template) two weeks before classes begin. Word on the street is that next semester they will start adding the ISBN to the list, but I’ll believe that when I see it. Cornell has never been very motivated in doing anything that will save the students a nickel or dime. (i.e. we pay for gym passes, campus bus system, inflated food prices, and so much more).

Wow, this has turned out to be a lot longer than I thought. But really, did you expect me to be anything less than passionate about a topic that costs me over $500 a semester?