RSSThe Price of Getting Edumacated, Part II
I always keep a running total of all textbook expenditures for each semester, if for nothing else but to allow me to look back in ten years and remember why I’m still paying back student loans. In addition to the books purchased last week, I also had to pick up a small packet for Spanish, costing $4.50 (plus the two books on Spanish grammar I picked up prior to the start of the semester, about $31 for both).
My Honors Senior Seminar requires two books and one packet. The $31 packet is 271 numbered pages with two lightweight cardstock covers, so it’s actually roughly 135 sheets of regular copy paper and two sheets of lightweight cardstock. For $31. We are all in the wrong field. You want to make money? Make (legal? illegal?) black and white copies of books and articles for professors and charge the students at least $0.23 per sheet. You’re guaranteed business because if students don’t buy the packet, they fail the course.
The $34 book is Social Research: A Simple Guide by Morley D. Glicken and the $33 book is Symbols, Selves, and Social Reality: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach to Social Psychology and Sociology by Kent L. Sandstrom, Daniel D. Martin, and Gary Alan Fine (one of the authors was also my professor’s doctorate advisor). For Symbols, I’ll be checking back at the bookstore to see if they get in either a used copy in better condition (I can’t stand someone else’s highlighting and notes) or a new book. I’ll pay the extra $15 to get a text without as much marking as the one I currently have has. Yeah, have has.
So, grand total for Spring 2006: $430.86.
Please don’t ever vote for someone who believes it’s good to cut funding to (higher) education. Some of us really, really need those state grants.
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6 Comments
So POL620 has like eighteen books*. The good(?) news is that they cost like $200ish including rush shipping on one book. And the most textbookish (read: expensive) of them all, I already had on my shelf, so I assume that means I came out about $40 ahead.
So sorry to hear you came in over the $400 mark. Semesters below that are rough, but you kind of expect that. Over $400 is where it really starts to hurt. I mean, at that rate, you don’t even have time to spend your loan money on liquor!
* — An exaggeration. A more accurate count is “one shitload of books”.
Why not interlibrary loan? I’ve used ILL services for undergrad and grad classes, and it works quite nicely. There will always be classes that require books that you won’t want to keep after the semester is over, so why not just borrow them? Unfortunately, ILL services were cut for required books at my university this year. I’m convinced it has something to do with Barnes and Noble running the campus bookstore.
Because the thought never entered my mind! I always forget the magic that is a library. I will keep ILL in mind for next semester, so thank you, Lunadyke.
Although, the bibliophile in me shudders at the thought of not being able to mark up a book as my own.
even after finding all my books for my history class on amazon marketplace and using my 10% purdue employee discount at university bookstore, i still broke $150 for two classes. TWO CLASSES! damn my $78 USED psychology textbook.
I paid close to $150 for that bitch and the bookstores didn’t accept buy backs for it.