“Trustees may have just raised tuition by 3.5 percent, but textbooks are still becoming more expensive and beyond reasonable cost. Estimates of how much students spend on textbooks range from $700 to $1,100 annually, and the market for new books is estimated at $3.”
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Trustees may have just raised tuition by 3.5 percent, but textbooks are still becoming more expensive and beyond reasonable cost.

Estimates of how much students spend on textbooks range from $700 to $1,100 annually, and the market for new books is estimated at $3.6 billion this year. Since 1986, the prices have nearly tripled. The cost of tuition is already on the rise. So does the government really need to make college students more broke than we already are?

The responsibility of paying tuition alone is daunting enough, but spending $500 or more per semester on books is absurd. We’re in college, people. McDoubles and the occasional Starbucks drink are barely within our budgets, let alone a $200 environmental science textbook? Nope.

It is not uncommon for students to go as far as spending hours on end photocopying entire textbooks to avoid paying the full price.

Prices for new textbooks have risen as publishers have tried to curb a swiftly increasing trade in used books. The market for used textbooks began expanding with the growth of the Internet as students from across the U.S. connected to buy and sell used books, putting off the sales of new books and undermining publishers’ market share.

It is with good reason that students are buying used books. We simply cannot afford them at the price they are at now, and that price continues to increase annually. However, in an effort to try to reduce the sales of used books, publishers have come up with a few strategies.

Publishers began making new books more attractive by packaging them with workbooks and CDs, but at an even more expensive cost. They make purchase of a new book necessary by equipping them with one-use admission codes needed for supplementary course material online. They are also making custom editions for specific professors or universities, greatly restricting the resale market for the books.

Luckily, there is a fairly new option out there to combat the rising prices of textbooks. Several Web sites have come out that offer students the option of renting textbooks for a semester as opposed to purchasing them. This way, the texts will be up to date and largely cheaper than buying new. For example, Chegg.com offers an African American Concise History book for $35.00 per semester. All that is required of the renter is to return the book at the end of the semester. Either renting or buying used books are far more feasible options for students scrounging for cash.

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