High Cost of College Textbooks Essay

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.

The Cost of College Textbooks Today, there is a significant number of people financially unstable and unable to attend college due to the high expenses. Although junior colleges and universities need money to operate, students are struggling to pay for college textbooks because they are extremely expensive. There are loans and grants students can apply for, but getting textbooks is a necessity at the beginning of each semester and students cannot wait for the loans to come in. This abhorrent pricing Murray State College is extensively enforcing is only forcing college students who are trying to better themselves into a downward spiral resulting in a tornado of stress, money loss, and self-deprecation, which can be prevented.

High costs of college tuition has been a rising concern for many future and former college students. There are college graduates who are concerned after graduation if they made the right choice paying for a college degree. There are also future students who are not as tempted to attend college because of how expensive it is. While there are certain majors that pay well, many of the majors in college do not pay remotely enough considering what it costs to obtain the degree it takes to do the job. This debt is harder to pay off for this very reason which creates difficulty for graduates to move on in life. To make this situation better for future college graduates, tuition needs to be adjusted based on a scale where what the students are putting

Traci was sad that she was going to lose points and sad that she was unable to buy a textbook. She is a hardworking student. She wants to do well in school and get A’s in all subjects. In order for that to happen, in Tyler Junior College, the Library should have a minimum of 5 copies of each reserve textbook that should be available to students like Traci to use, because textbooks are expensive to buy or to rent. There is a long wait to get a book, and at present, there are not enough reserve text books available.

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?

“Marketing Professors’ Perspectives on the Cost of College Textbooks: A Pilot Study” is a paper by Lawrence S. Silver, Robert E. Stevens of Southeastern Oklahoma State University and Kenneth E. Clow of University of Louisiana. It was published in the Journal of Education for Business Volume 87. The first half of the paper starts off by explaining why the cost of textbooks is an issue. They go on to explain different competitors’ textbook have in the marketplace today and how publishers are trying to appeal new customers through professors. The second half of the paper focuses on a study that was done by surveying random marketing professors in the United States. The survey contained questions asking about the pricing of textbooks and how they

With the rampant year over year releases and innovations in the consumer sector, computers and tablets are cheaper than ever. While one may argue that devices still remain more expensive than a simple notepad and pencil, students opting not to use a computer will accrue incrementally more costs for notebooks and/or paper, binders, the printing of class notes, and hard copy textbooks for each course. With PDF and online textbooks now available, at substantially lower costs, tech savvy students have additional cost and use advantages. Further, digital resources permit publishers to regularly update e-textbook forms. This is relevant for schools that utilize one text for multiple years and better ensures accuracy and currency. Beyond the economic benefits, computers have other practical advantages. They significantly reduce the amount of weight students carry in knapsacks, improve ergonomics, and ameliorate possible future absenteeism and medical costs due to back injury. Finally, reduced paper consumption and its footprint are more environmentally friendly and consistent with the University of Toronto’s sustainability

Chegg offers solutions for students who can't afford overpriced textbooks. Their motto is “saving broke students one textbook at a time.” When a student begins their college experience, they're excited and full of hope. That is true until they learn how much it costs to purchase their textbooks. Even if they have a loan or financial aid for college itself, that doesn't cover the cost of books.

I do believe that high textbook prices is conspicuous because many students and parents around the country see that the price of textbook are ridiculously high and sometimes they have to take out another loan just to pay them. They also notice that not only do they have to pay thousands of dollars for tuition, they also have to drop another thousand a semester just to buy textbooks and maybe supplies.

`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

Chapman, Gary. "Digital Nation: Push to Trade Class Textbooks For Laptop PCS Is A Misuse Of Technology." Teacher Librarian 26.1 (1998): n. pag. Education Research Complete. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.

The essay “What are the Enablers and Barriers to Successful Adoption and Commercialization of Digital Textbooks,” discusses the many benefits and drawback of transitioning to digital textbooks. The essay asserts that digital textbooks are on the rise and that there is a good probability they will overtake printed textbooks

To start off, schools need to realize the amount they can save in the long run by utilizing technology and lean away from traditional, old fashioned, hard cover books. When books become outdated and used, schools have to spend endless amounts to replace them. To avoid this, schools can take the initiate and work proactively and replace hard cover books with electronics to avoid unnecessary expenses. An example of this occurred at Empire High School which recently made a switch from textbooks even though, “it wasn’t because of a funding crisis.” (Source A) Empire High School shows just how well technology can work. Not only does technology help in saving necessary funding, it adds a sure convenience factor to the students and teachers by not having to drag around large and expensive textbooks.