It’s almost that time of year again — after four months of barely glancing at that $100 microeconomics textbook, you take it back to the bookstore to sell it back for a few bucks. However, the professor changed a few sentences in the old edition to make a new one, and now the bookstore will only give you $5, barely enough to buy a burrito.
Every year students are forced to toss their money around like it’s water, and something needs to change. One reason students may not get a fair price when they sell back books is only about 25-30 percent of professors and departments submit textbook requests by the first deadline, which is about six weeks before final exams.
MSU should assign professors to classes early enough for those professors to organize and choose the books before final exams. That way, bookstores can know which books they will need to sell and can offer more for students to buy them back.
Also, professors should not require students to buy a book if the professor doesn’t plan on using at least some of the material in that book. It’s one thing for a student to buy a book and never use it because that student is lazy, but it’s another issue to ask students to spend money on books they won’t even need.
This would help avoid the catch-22 students find themselves in every semester — if they buy the book early, they may not need it and will find out too late to return it. If they wait to find out if they need the book, by the time they know they actually need it, the bookstore may be sold out. If students buy the book online to save some cash, it’s often impossible to return it if they don’t end up needing it.
One great way to avoid a lot of the inherent expenses of book buying is to buy and sell textbooks outside the student bookstore system.
It may take a little bit more time and work, but Web sites that allow students to trade books or Web sites that allow people to set their own prices for books end up putting much less of a dent in students’ wallets.
AllMSU.com is a great, localized resource for MSU students, and it allows students to search for people selling the book they need by class. Also, since allMSU.com is geared toward people in East Lansing, it’s possible to pick up a textbook in person instead of paying for shipping.
Facebook.com’s Marketplace is another online classifieds source that allows users to sell and buy textbooks to other MSU students, again avoiding those shipping charges.
It may be possible to sell or find a book faster on international Web sites like Amazon.com and eBay.com, but sellers will have to take the time to ship the books, and buyers will have to pay for shipping. Still, the amount a student saves by purchasing used books on such sites often more than makes up for the shipping costs. Selling books on eBay has its risks, though — if there isn’t much interest in purchasing the book, someone could win with a very low bid.
With a little time and effort, students can avoid the price gouging and unfair buyback prices inherent in the local student bookstores.
However, it’s also important for professors and department heads to remember they were students once, and money wasn’t easy to come by, and it often isn’t worth $100 for a rarely used book or a coursepack full of photocopied pages.
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