College Textbooks

Specific Purpose Statement: To persuade my audience to take a stand and change how expensive purchasing textbooks are at Colorado State University.

Attention-getter: How much money have you spent just this year alone on college? Hold on now, did you include all the fees? Living expenses? Your meal plan? Obvioulsy the answer is going to be in the upwards of thousands of dollars. Depressing, I know! College should be a time where you are truly discovering who you are and what you want to do with your life. It shouldn’t be about how you’re slowly but surely giving your life away to student loans. Oh yes, student loans, the mortal enemy of any college student. The college tuition alone is already high enough to put you in debt with student loans for a majority of your life. There are many things that factor into the price of a college education, some reasonable, others however, are a different story. Today, I want to talk to you about the scam that is going on concerning the price of college textbooks. An interesting statistic by The Huffington Post tells us that the cost of college textbooks has increased 253% faster than the cost of college tuition over the decade. How come college textbooks are so expensive? And what can we do to stop this? Well let’s get into it shall we.

I. ATTENTION GETTER: Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School mentioned in The New York Times how textbooks and school supplies account to 26% of all student fees in State Universities and in Junior colleges it is about a 72%. Just how much money do we have to put in textbooks in order to get an education.

In response to Mr. Caldwell’s essay, I agree that the cost of college education is exorbitant. First, the cost of books alone can be several hundred dollars not including additional codes and materials to access online materials. There are several hidden fees such as parking, student IDs and other various miscellaneous items. Secondly, it seems as though some instructors have little interest in teaching. Instead they have canned responses and make little effort to interact. Rather than feeling as though you are participating

The cost of college books has tripled in the last 10 years, costing an average of $200 dollars (NIA). College 's will publish their own books, require students to buy them, then update or revise them every year to make the book obsolete causing students to have to by new one 's every year and making the resale of them, nonexistent! College 's will work with publishers and recieve kick backs for using books they publish. Adminstation for college also feel the advantage of higher tuition rates. The president of Yale salary has tripled from $591,709 in 2000, to 1.63 million in 2009.(5) With the average cost of graduating at a 4 year college at $27,293 a year, it is easy to see who is truly profitting from an attending and/or graduated student. Colleges are captializing of students in a poor economy and once out of college, their is no guarentee employment will be waiting.

The number one stress causer of most students is the cost of books. Books can range anywhere from sixty dollars up to around three hundred. In a survey it is shown that students pay up to $1,200 a year just on books! On books. Nothing more. Many teachers pick their books, not the school. Why do the teachers pick some of the most expensive when there are other books with the same information that cost almost half the price? Due to this, many resort to renting books but on some websites it cost just as much as the new price. Though financial aid is an option to help with this overpriced ordeal, it doesn’t always cover

For decades, the options of renting apartments, cars, and movies. Renting allows the person in mind to enjoy goods while they need them and return them when they are no longer useful. However, can renting textbooks actually be worth it for students?

Ethan Senack, a higher education associate at U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group), wrote in his article titled, “Fixing The Broken Textbook Market: How Students Respond To High Textbook Cost And Demand Alternatives.” Whereas, he suggest that the problems associated with high pricing on textbooks, has nothing to do with the student. However, he feels that the students would be the most effective in seeking lower prices for textbooks. He gave several examples of colleges that are overcoming this barrier. One successful example he used was Maryland Open-Source Textbook (MOST). The university staff, professors and students worked together to generate ideas to reduce the cost of textbooks, using the use of open textbooks (16).

And students are forced to either wait for the books to be restocked ,or purchase their books online. when it comes to purchasing a book online is sometimes you can't find the right book you need, but if students are able to find the book, then students would have to wait another week to receive their books. Students that go through this problem in college are being affected by their schoolwork, and students fall behind on class assignments, homework, and study plans. This problem causes students to get a zero on all assignments, and there are projects that come from the book that are due in

(Postman 1996) Postman also has a very strong viewpoint on textbooks and how they should be eliminated. Postman states that textbooks should be eliminated because they show students false and now old things on whatever they’re learning, where as the Internet has more information and the information will be more up to date each year. (Postman 1996) Postman argues that since the schools do not have enough money to order new up to date textbooks every year that the schools should just get rid of them.

The minds of teenagers or kids aren’t fully developed yet. The human brain starts it 's developing when the human being born and just finishes it 's total developing around the 19-20 years old. According to Sarah Alice Brown, “Other moves by the textbook industry, such as issuing new editions, also, drive up the cost according to a 2011 survey from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. New editions are released on average every 3.9 years, but a 2008 report from the California state auditor found many college deans, department chairs and faculty members admitted revisions to textbooks are often minimal and not always warranted”(Brown, the web). Therefore, a kid around fourteen years old doesn 't have the capacity to understand and analyze his or her environment, and understand the laws like eighteen years older person. Just to make the point

One of the main reasons why college textbooks are so expensive is because they are overpriced. The publishers set the prices. The bookstore has no control. The publishers of the textbooks are in the habit of bringing new editions quite frequently. Most students hesitate to buy old editions fearing that they will miss out on

College students are struggling every semester to afford books required for their classes and this will continue if we allow professors, and college bookstores to take advantage of us. College is already expensive. At FSU tuition is 6,000. Housing is another 6,500 dollars you have to eat so that’s 4000 for a meal plan and we can’t forget about the textbooks and that will be about 1000 dollars. So for one year at Florida State that is almost 18,000 dollars. Outrageous, right? Now that you know about these disgraceful prices. Let me tell you a story about me. The summer before my freshman year at FSU, I was a carefree girl with goals to graduate with a high GPA and at least 2-3 jobs lined up for me to choose from. I arrived to Tallahassee a couple of days before classes and I decided with all of my friends to buy my required textbooks before classes started. Little did I know, what, I was getting myself into. I began my search for my books with my first class which was chemistry 1045. When I finally came upon the book I was shocked. $120.00 for a used paperback book. Still in awe I decided to walk away and collect the rest of the materials for my Chemistry class. Googles, a lab manual, a lab coat and an iclicker which all came out to be nearly $150.00 add the book and I spent nearly $300.00 for one class.

`One reason college textbooks should be free is because how expensive they are. The price of a college textbook can start at a hundred dollars. Most students are required to have a few textbooks each semester. So the prices of each textbook will add up and may cost over a few hundred

“Ripe for digital destruction,” (A Textbook) were words of the late Steve Jobs referring to the enormous potential for the textbooks industry. He believed the textbook market to be worth an estimated 8 billion dollars in the U.S. alone. His vision was to lessen the burden of carrying heavy textbooks around, while also offering them as a free feature with the iPad. He wanted to change the culture of textbooks forever.