Textbooks are sexy (Part 2): Homeward Bound

I’m writing this post while sitting in the airport on my way back to Halifax, which is fitting, because everything I’ve learned this week tells me that the solution to dealing with the high costs of textbooks begins at home. As I mentioned in my last post, Dalhousie faculty and instructors are the ultimate decision makers when it comes to choosing and negotiating textbook orders for you. Alternatives, though there are few, need to be made apparent to students on campus before they’ve made their textbook purchases for the year.

Each year profs are approached by marketing representatives from the major publishing companies. Obviously, professors of larger classes are the target market, giving publishers the biggest bang for their book (Har har…). Profs can be (and usually are) offered lucrative deals from these reps. If, lets say, a prof is considering ordering “Campbell Biology” (Gazzilionth Edition) they may be offered full copyright access to countless images and diagrams for their slideshow, teaching aids, technological supplements for course websites, and more. Often times, profs aren’t even given a price for the text book until an order has been made. And, if your prof accidentally spent too much time on the beach over the summer and failed to order their course texts until August, the cost of your textbook just jumped over the moon. The list goes on.

An interesting tidbit that came out of our meeting with the publishers was the availability of digital texts for courses. James Reeves, president of Neilson Publishing’s Higher Education Division, argued that a large majority of their books were offered in digital format at roughly half the price, but, he concluded, it was pretty evident from sales that students preferred hard copy. This, of course, took us by surprise, as a straw poll quickly revealed that not a single student in the room was aware of this service. Think of the money that students could save (or better yet, the money we could curtail from the publishers) if students in our huge first year courses were able to purchase digital texts for half the cost of the hard-copy.

There is a long list of actions we can take here at Dal to mitigate the financial burden of textbook purchases on students. I’m in the process of developing an action plan for the year that consists of meetings with faculty members, student awareness initiatives and coordination with other student unions and bookstores.

In the meantime, if you’re as concerned about the costs of textbooks as I am, here are some steps you can take:

1. Talk to your prof. Ask them how they ordered your textbooks. Find out if they asked what the price of the books would be before they made an order. Ask if they inquired as to whether or not a digital version of the text was available at a cheaper cost. Make sure your prof knows you expect this of them.

2. Check tigerbooks to see if you can get a purchase a used textbook from someone who no longer needs theirs. If you can’t find the edition you’re looking for, ask your prof to see if you can get away with using a previous edition.

3. Share a book with a friend, or use a copy of the book that is on reserve in the library.

As I continue researching this issue more, I’ll keep you DSUers who are watching from blogland posted on what else we can due. So stay tuned!