Now that the second full week of classes has ended, most people have their schedules set and have gotten the required books. Although the shock value of having to pay over $500 for books that many students will never open has probably worn out for cynical upperclassmen, the outrage should not. Professors should have a cap on the amount of money that books from their class can cost.
This semester I took four classes. Yet my books cost over $600. I will be lucky if I can get a 20 percent return at the bookstore at the end of the semester. Unfortunately, I have concluded, after talking to many fellow students over the years, that my own personal situation seems to be the norm, not the exception at this school. While college students across the country are often at the mercy of high textbook prices, the University students are in an even worse situation because of the budget cuts.
With the possibility of a tuition hike, it is extremely important not to overburden students financially. Not to mention the fact that with the new restrictions on printing, students may end up spending money to print out an article for a class from toolkit if they go over their 500-side limit, and next year it will be all pay-for-print.
The best way to prevent students from being ripped off by buying textbooks is to establish firm monetary limits on what a professor can assign. For example, an $80 limit on all liberal arts subjects would make it so that if a student had five liberal arts subjects, his total for the semester could not be over $400. In order to keep under the cap, it might mean that cheaper editions of books might need to be used. Possible exceptions could be granted for classes which have naturally highly priced textbooks such as International Law. They could be given higher caps as long as students knew this in advance, perhaps by denoting this in the Course Offering Directory. Sciences could be allowed a higher cap because their textbooks usually cost more.
Used books could be calculated into the equation. If a professor wanted to stay below the cap by figuring in used book prices, that would be fine as long as the used books were available at the University Bookstore.
In an e-mail, University Bookstore Director Jonathan Kates, said that if professors ordered their books for the next semester before the book buy back at the end of the semester, the Bookstore could buy more used books from students and pay them more for their used books. But despite the efforts of the Bookstore and Student Council, 65 percent of the orders still arrive after the buy back period. A cap on how much the books for a class could cost would force professors to be more conscientious and order early.
In order for a professor to stay below the limit, he or she would have to calculate the prices of all the books he wants his students to read, and then make cuts. Instead of twelve paperback books, he may only be able to assign nine. Professors would have to structure their course around what books would fall below the cap.
This is possible if professors research which books they use. Kates said, "the Bookstore is happy to provide each faculty member with the retail cost of any of the books that he or she may be considering. Sometimes the same book is available from more than one publisher and in some instances the price of these books may vary considerably." Right away it is possible to save money for students.
Kates points out that price is not all that professors think about when selecting an edition of a book, and may choose a certain edition because of a critical appendix it contains. But new translations, appendices, footnotes or prefaces often don't matter to the book itself.
But despite his sympathy to the plight of students, Mr. Kates is against a cap. He says, "I am not in favor of setting a cap on the amount that class textbooks can cost, because I believe that it can create barriers to learning by limiting a professor's choice of course materials."
Kates' argument is the primary one against that of a cap, but caps would do nothing to sacrifice the education at this university. The key problem with an argument that says that a cap could cut vital materials available to a professor is that it is the quality of the professors, not books, that make a class. Bad books won't drag down a good professor, and good books can't save a bad professor.
With rising costs for University students, we can no longer afford to spend a fortune on textbooks. A cap on the amount that each class can spend is a good start to looking out for the interest of the people who pay the professors' salaries, and keep the Bookstore in business: the students.
(Harris Freier's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at hfreier@cavalierdaily.com.)
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