What to do about the rising costs of textbooks

The cost of textbooks is rising. As is the cost of a college education. What are students of limited means supposed to do about the rising costs of textbooks? Financial Aid has not raised its levels to meet the rising costs of books. Why are professors still assigned such expensive books? The average student will be spending $700-$1000 on books for the fall semester this year. This increases if you take languages or science courses. So what can you do?

You can, and should, buy books off the Internet. Sites such as half.com and amazon.com provide access to used books that are significantly cheaper than the used books in the school bookstore. For my graduate course this semester, the used books in the book store totaled $450.00. I bough all of my used books online at amazon.com for less than $150.00. School bookstores are expensive. Only go there to get the name and edition of the books you need. Otherwise, shop online.

Another plan is to split your books with a friend. I did this in law school. Law book are hard to find online, especially the specific case studies. So I had to use the bookstore. A friend and I bought the books together and shared them. It meant we had to organize our studying, and take good notes, but it was worth it.

Additionally, coming the fall, coursesmart will offer digital versions of 4,300 widely used texts at 1/2 off the price of the print book. Flat world knowledge also has digital textbooks coming early next year at a discounted price.

What can teachers do? The easy answer is to stop assigning such expensive books. But that isn't always a solution. CSU Merlot (www.merlot.org) has teaching resources available for free. So does connexions by Rice University (www.cnx.org). Teachers should use these resources to aid in lowering the costs to students.

MIT also has open course ware (www.ocw.mit.edu) which has lecture notes, problem sets, and answers for almost every course they offer. It is a great resource. Other sites, like wikibooks, contain other information that students and teachers can have access to.

But in reality, if it is a course you need, the books are going to have to be bought. Try some of the solutions above, but don't get discouraged. College is worth the expense of books.