The Simmons Voice

Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Opinion & Editorial

Media Credit: Kate Clavet A typical courseload can cost over $600, a strain on a tight college budget.

According to Western Michigan University the average student spends about $850 a year on textbooks alone. At Simmons, most students take four to five classes each semester, which means students are spending $170-$212 dollars per class.

Simmons students are all required to fill 9 modes in order to graduate which are certainly an important part of a liberal arts education, however, it also means students will be taking nine classes and spending $1,500 dollars on books they may never use again.

In order to fight back on high textbook prices students have begun ordering used books online, from sites like Amazon.com, Addallbooks.com, Half.com, and Ebay.com.

However, the bookstore automatically tells a student that the newest edition of the book is required. Also if a professor requires a newly published text for a course it will still be terribly expensive.

Purchasing used textbooks is a legal penny saving alternative. However, for some students saving ten dollars on a book is just not enough.

For example, the course Global Warming and Climate Change at Simmons College requires "Global Warming: Understanding the forecast." On Amazon, the new version of this book goes for $40.00 plus shipping. In the Simmons College bookstore the book goes for $70.20 brand new and $52.65 if a used copy is available. If one ordered the book from Amazon, assuming shipping will cost downwards of 5 dollars then they saved approximately thirty dollars. For some students thirty dollars is not enough.

Some students have taken to downloading electronic copies of their books illegally. According to "Textbooks: Free, and Illegal," a Boston Globe article published in 2008 by Hiawatha Bray Cengage Learning Inc., reported that in "any given month, 200 to 300 of the company's titles are posted illegally as free Internet downloads."

Is this just way to punish textbook companies for outrageous prices? Is it ethical? Is free textbook downloading so wrong?

Kathleen McKendry a Boston University graduate student had this to say, "From the college student standpoint, there's nothing better than keeping a few extra dollars in your pocket. However, I'm a big supporter of not stealing - although some text books are outrageously expensive, the money you pay for them goes to companies which then goes to the companies' employees."

Continued...

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