By Logan Jones, Mckayla Holson, and Bailey Rankin
Student Reporters
Higher education students all over the nation are well aware of the fact that textbooks are pricy. This has been an ongoing problem for years now.
But what, exactly, is being done about it? Will students continue to struggle with the decision to skip meals or get textbooks? What are students doing to help combat this ever-growing problem?
Tiffany Willson, a junior early childhood education major, said that the textbook prices affect her family because three of them are attending Northwestern right now; the cost of books quickly adds up.
“I don’t usually buy from the bookstore because they are super expensive compared to the other places such as Chegg and Amazon,” Willson said. “So, what we do is go through and make a spreadsheet of prices for Chegg, Amazon, Bookstore and E-Campus and we find the cheapest books. We buy from all four places every semester because we are buying the cheapest we can find.”
The NWOSU bookstore at the Alva campus is no stranger to the students’ complaints about book prices.
“Follett, just my bookstore only, donates $10,000 a year. So, all of the $500 scholarship gift cards that some students get for two semesters while they’re here come straight from us. We do that every semester and they take $5,000 per semester to give to the lucky students who are able to win those gift cards,” Michelle Kingcade, store manager of the bookstore, said.
Willson said she is aware of the book scholarship, and she has one, but she uses it to buy other school supplies.
“I have a bookstore scholarship for $500 each semester,” Willson said, “but even with that I feel they’re overpriced, and I can’t bring myself to buy them. When we can get books for $20 on Amazon, it doesn’t make sense to pay $120 in the bookstore.”
Chloe Nutley, a junior math major, said she goes without textbooks during the summer. “During the summer I don’t have scholarships to pay for textbooks, so I have to buy them out of pocket,” Nutley said. “Sometimes I just don’t buy them, and my grades suffer.”
International students are not able to get these scholarships and they have to buy their books out of pocket.
“When I first came, I didn’t know that books were so expensive,” Zineth, an international student from Bangladesh, said.
She was told that she needed to buy all the books before classes began, so she did and she ended up not using many of them.
“I bought almost $500 worth of books and then some of my teachers said, ‘you don’t even need to use those books’,” she said.
Zineth tried to return the unused books, but the slip was opened and the bookstore told her they couldn’t take the books back.
“I had $200 wasted and it was frustrating,” she said.
Kathy Kristof, a finance reporter, conducted her own research on the topic.
In an article she wrote in 2018 for CBS news, she found that “65 percent of students skip buying required texts at some point in their college career because of a lack of affordability.”
On a national level, in an effort to help students, the Affordable College Textbook Act was introduced to the United States Senate on Sept. 26, 2017. The bill is meant to “expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.”
In the findings section of the bill, it says that through the use of open educational resources, which are “an educational resource that either resides in the public domain or has been released under an intellectual property license that permits its free use, reuse, or modification,” as the potential to save students more than $1 billion every year.
The open educational resources include open textbooks, that are “a set of open educational resources that either is a textbook or can be used in place of a textbook for a postsecondary course at an institution of higher education,” according to the bill.
Open educational resources could also significantly lower textbook costs and reduce financial barriers to higher education. This could make efficient use of taxpayer funds.
Even if students do have the ability to buy all their textbooks, they sometimes don’t even use them for a class. Occasionally, the book will be “required,” but all the information needed is already in the PowerPoint presentations the professor uses.
In a recent survey conducted at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, students were able to voice their opinions on the prices of textbooks. Of those who completed the survey, 90 percent of the students said they have either purchased or rented a book for a class but never used it.
Some students do not bother with buying the book until after the first week or two of classes, if they get it at all, because they do not want to waste money.
“I never get the textbook until after the class starts to make sure I need it,” Sharon Boeckman, freshman math major, said. “I bought the textbook for a Biology class, but I realized soon that I didn’t really need it.”
Boeckman said that she usually buys her math textbooks, but she doesn’t usually buy her general class books.
“My decision to purchase or rent books at all depends on how expensive they are and how bad I need them,” Marisa Wilkinson, junior early childhood education major, said. “I do find it annoying that once the rentals are all gone you have to buy the new book instead of just renting the newer book.”
“Most of my classes use Cengage/WebAssign or Learnsmart, so I only bought two actual books,” a survey participant responded. “I needed to buy a third one, but it was too expensive. The books I do have I plan on giving away to any incoming freshmen who want them.”
“Cengage [Unlimited] came out last fall of 2018,” Kingcade said. “So last fall was our first run through and we had an OK amount and once me and the team [bookstore staff] finally figured out what was going on and how it could really benefit students and not to charge them for Cengage unlimited and then sell a Cengage book.
We finally figured it out so this semester has been awesome for it. We have had a wonderful turnaround on that. I train my students to understand that if they have general education classes that have access codes, they don’t have to buy the cardboard coat. All they have to do is buy one access and then you’re good to go.”
Getting back to the root of the problem, and the main issue here, why are textbook prices so high? Claims by multiple sources conflict with each other.
“Cost wise, yes they are going down,” Kingcade said. “So, since we are technically a retail company, especially Follet, we buy them at cost, and we have to mark them up to make a profit off of them.”
According to the Association of American Publishers, student spending on course materials has actually “declined significantly over the past 10 years,” going from $700 to $500 annually.
Studies done by National Association of College Stores and Student Monitor show that students spent an average of $500 on textbooks and other course materials during the 2017-18 academic school year. They also concluded that this marked the third consecutive year that student spending on such materials has decreased.
The AAP’s reasons for the declining spending are due in part to competitive retail markets, increased usage of inclusive Access programs, which are programs that include the cost of course materials in tuition, as well as students having more options, whether it be buying or renting, and physical copies versus digital copies.
While the AAP says that book prices have declined, other articles say otherwise.
According to an NBC article by Herb Weisbaum, the cost of a college textbook has increased by 73 percent since 2006. The College Board suggests students put aside $1,200 a year for textbooks and supplies.
Why are textbooks so expensive?
Kristof suggests access codes as being the main culprit in the high prices of textbooks. Access codes are only good for the one class and then the textbook essentially becomes useless to other students. This means the retail price is low, if they can even sell the book in the first place.
The low retail price is something that affects many students. If they are not going to use the book anymore, what is the point in keeping it?
Unfortunately, not all textbooks can be sold after the academic year.
So, what do students do with their textbooks after they are finished with the class? In the Northwestern student survey, many students said that they keep them, give them away or try to sell them. They oftentimes do not get their money back or even close to it.
“I try to sell them back, but there have been instances where the bookstore is not taking them,” a survey participant said. “Otherwise, they usually have a box you can donate your books to, so I do that if I really don’t need that book again.”
Another participant said “I only got about $14 when I tried to sell back a $200 book. If I can’t sell them back, they just take up space on a shelf at home.”
“It’s not worth selling them back, the bookstore does not offer you much to buy them,” said a third participant. “I try to sell them to others who need them. You may only get half of the original price if you are lucky.”
Why is the resale price so low? How is it possible to purchase a $200 textbook, that is barely used, for $14?
“As long as the books are in sellable condition, no water damage whatsoever, we’ll buy them back,” Kingcade said. In what she described as the “bucket method,” the bookstore needs to buy back the books that the professors decide that they will need the following semester.
“Say I need 20 used textbooks for personal finance,” Kingcade said. “I’m gonna start buying them back and the first five or 10 are going to be pretty expensive for me to buy back, say $50, but the closer I get to my number the price goes down. That’s how they [Follet] figure out how to do buyback. So, when a student comes to me and says, ‘I bought this for $250 and you’re only going to give me $60,’ I have to say, ‘I’m so sorry but I just don’t have a need for it right now.’ It’s not only my store that does it, it’s for the whole Follet company.”
Kingcade also makes sure that students know about the NWOSU book Buy, Sell & Trade page on Facebook. “Sometimes I’ll suggest to a student ‘hey, if you want to sell it for more, go to that website,’” Kingcade said. “I think that includes all three campuses.”
Furthermore, in a New York Post article, Alex Neal, CEO of CampusBooks.com, said, “since the publishers don’t make any money off used-book sales, their business model is to make the old editions obsolete and force you to buy a new book.”
All the conflicting studies and stories aside, the Northwestern bookstore sees good things on the horizon for students trying to sell back their textbooks.
“I think this year it’ll be a better buy back season,” Kingcade said. “Most students are afraid ‘oh, they’re not going to buy them back’ or ‘oh, they’re only going to give me five bucks.’ Well if you come in and check, that’s five extra dollars in your pocket.”