Anyone in college knows textbook prices are out of control. Whether it’s the inexcusably high prices in stores or professors making our textbooks worthless for sellback by changing the required book needlessly often, textbooks remain a hidden cost of attending college. It is not unusual to see students spend nearly $1,000 or more each semester just buying books.
Thankfully, the student body presidents of Mississippi’s public universities, including our own Blake Jeter, have come together with a plan to help curb these costs. They presented the plan to the Institutions of Higher Learning last week.
One point of the plan is to require professors to announce the textbook the class will use, along with the ISBN, within 40 days prior to the end of the previous semester. If the professor teaching the class hasn’t been determined, or if he or she fails to make the choice in time, the department head will step in and choose the textbook. This would give students sufficient time to shop around different stores, both in person and online, for the best price on the textbook.
The plan would also require textbooks to be adopted for a minimum of three years for lower division courses and two years for upper division courses. This would prevent professors from requiring a barely-changed new edition and would make it less likely for students to be stuck with a book that is no longer used and thus no longer allowed to be sold back.
Of course if a situation arises in which new information legitimately makes a textbook obsolete, the dean would be able to approve an exception to the above rule.
This plan is a major step in the right direction. All too often students are stuck paying an outrageously high price for a book because they are not given the chance to shop around for the best price. All too often students are stuck with “outdated” textbooks they can’t sell back because of extremely minor differences with the current edition.
No, this plan is not a foolproof silver bullet that will cleanse students’ financial worries forever. There will still be instances in which a new book is adopted, and some professors may even try to dart around the 3-year rule. It also does not solve the occasional problem of professors carelessly requiring students to purchase books they don’t actually need.
The important thing, however, is this plan will give students the opportunity to save some money. Ultimately, it will still be the students’ responsibility to look up the name and ISBN of their textbooks and price shop.
Though the proposal does not guarantee students will save money, it does give students that chance, and it increases the probability of getting some money when selling back at the end of the semester. Because of this, The Reflector editorial board wholeheartedly endorses the plan.
The Reflector editorial board is made up of opinion editor Harry Nelson, news editor April Windham, assistant news editor Julia Pendley, sports editor Bob Carskadon, entertainment editor Hannah Rogers, photo editor Ariel Nachtigal, copy editors Amy Addington and David Breland, online editor Adam Kazery, graphic designer Carl Carbonell, managing editor Aubra Whitten and editor in chief Kyle Wrather.