I've written before about the issue of pricey textbooks and how the high costs hit students hard at the beginning of each semester.

As a grad student returning to school for the first time in two years, I met the textbook challenge head-on as classes started last week. I'm enrolled in four courses, plus a language class, and am going to audit another. That meant 12 books, including one macroeconomics and one microeconomics textbook (notoriously expensive). My school doesn't have a bookstore, just an online web site, MBSDirect, where you can order books listed for each of your classes.

I skipped that this weekend, however, and hopped on BookFinder.com, which offered TONS of help.

HOW I FARED:

Number of classes that required books: 4
Number of books purchased: 12
Grand total: $333.15
Total, if I purchased all new books on Amazon.com: $655.52
Time spent searching online: about 3 hours

INTERESTING STUFF:

- When I calculated the total on Amazon.com ($655.52), I picked the lowest-priced new book that appeared on the listing. (Amazon's prices are generally lower than in stores, and the site shows you listings of used and new books in order of cheapest to most expensive.) So the real total, had I relied on store-bought books, would likely have been much higher, I'm guessing in the range of about $800.

- The majority of the $333.15 I spent was from two econ and two history texts (4 books) that together totalled $193.16. The total would have been $342.43 for these four books alone if all were purchased new on Amazon.com.

- The books I purchased ranged in price from $5.49 (Goodstein, Out of Gas) to $65.22 (Abel, Macroeconomics).

- If purchased new from my school's textbook web site, the combined total of my macro and micro books (2 books) alone would have been $341.25, or $8.10 MORE that the TOTAL AMOUNT I spent on books this semester. (The two books combined would have cost $230.03 if purchased new on Amazon.)

- I'm not working right now, but let's say I had a job that paid me $20/hour. I'd have spent an extra $60 in the 3 hours I spent looking for books online. Luckily, on Saturday in DC we were being pelted by the after-effects of Hurricane Hanna so I really wasn't going anywhere anyway.

- $333.15 could have brought me almost all the way from DC to Hawaii, maybe at least to California. I'm sure next semester's book costs would have been enough to bring me back here.

Many students are shelling out big bucks - as much as $900 - PER SEMESTER on books required for classes. Although many profs sympathize with students, others who require the latest edition of the book or a customized book, created especially by a publisher for that particular university, may be unwittingly creating bigger expenses for students already strapped for cash.

The other thing I don't understand is classes that make their book lists available a day or two before classes start, then assign reading for the first day. Don't profs realize that many students now shop online, so the books can take a week or more to come, and that students are probably still perusing different classes during the first week of school and so may not have ordered ANY books yet?

For those students going back to school, I'd highly recommend BookFinder.com, which shows you prices from many different book sites, including Amazon, Half, AbeBooks, Alibris and Overstock. (It's like the Kayak.com of textbook shopping.)

Good luck!

Tags: books, education, grad school

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Quarterlife Island. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.