It’s been some years since I was in graduate school but I certainly remember the bile and bugged-out eyes at seeing how much textbooks retailed for – and the problem is only worsening (see? this is why the Internet is good, because the question of textbook obsolescence becomes, well, obsolete.) Anyway, the Raleigh News & Observer takes the usual boilerplate story and puts a UNC-Chapel Hill spin on it, especially as the tab for textbooks could be headed downward for students in the UNC system.
In March, reports Jane Stancill, the UNC Board of Governors passed rules designed to reduce the cost of textbooks. Most notably, by January 2008, each campus must have either a book rental program or a system to guarantee that books for large introductory courses would be bought back at a set price. And average textbook costs would be taken into account when campus leaders request tuition increases. Campuses are also testing ways to help students save money. They’re pressing professors to choose books earlier so stores can acquire enough used copies to meet demand. They’re urging students to buy their books during the state’s tax-free weekend. And they’re making plans to buy back more used books and then resell them the following semester.
That sounds good to students like Quanta Edwards, a junior English major at UNC-CH, who piled paperback novels and thick English anthologies into her shopping basket Friday for a total of $311. She recently tried to sell back two $70 books to no avail. “They were saying they had swapped editions,” she said. “That usually means changing the wording on a couple of pages. I don’t feel like it’s worth forcing the students to buy a whole new book over.” Others, like James Browning, a UNC-CH freshman from Corpus Christi, Texas who spent $415 for four books, take it all in stride. “I figure I have to buy the books, so I have to pay the prices,” he said. “I go for all the used books I can.”