ONE OF the best feelings in the world is the relief of finishing final exams. Unfortunately, this feeling is soon ended by a trip to the bookstore, where you find out just how little your books are worth. Getting $3 for a book you bought for $20 new is demoralizing. Yet it's hard to say which is worse: the low buyback price, or the sticker shock of buying those books new in the fall when there weren't enough used books.
Although many of us have accepted this as a fact of life, members of Student Council have been channeling their frustration and searching for solutions. Members of the Bookstore Advisory Board have requested that instructors order books earlier, in the belief that this will both increase the buyback prices and the supply of used books. The proposal does not entirely solve the problem of book costs, but is an important first step.
The University Bookstore determines buyback values by whether or not a title has been ordered for future use. If a title has been ordered, the bookstore will give students half of what they paid for the book. If not, the offer ranges from 10 to 40 percent of the book price. This system frustrates students when they realize that they seldom get 50 percent back.
The frustration increases when students see people the next semester carrying the same titles that the bookstore didn't buy back. However, according to Ronnie Mayhew, a Student Council representative on the Bookstore Advisory Council, this problem occurs because the bookstore doesn't know it will need the book in time for buyback.
In an effort to obtain books efficiently at the least expense, the Bookstore sets a priority order deadline of May 1 in the spring and Nov. 1 in the fall. Unfortunately, only a third of the orders came in on time last spring, and 20 percent last fall. In discussing this problem with the bookstore, Mayhew learned that meeting the deadline would nearly double the number of books bought back at 50 percent of the sticker price.
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It turns out, however, that professors weren't aware of the problem. When Mayhew presented to the Faculty Senate, professors told him that they hadn't worried about the deadlines because they thought they were arbitrary. Hopefully, the increased awareness will increase the rate of compliance.
Some departments comply better than others, due to better organization. In the mathematics department, for example, the department secretary coordinates orders to make it easier for professors to meet the deadlines. This method may not work for all departments, but a concerted effort to make it easier for professors to place timely orders is needed.
Some professors have expressed the concern that they do not want to reorder a book before receiving student evaluations. This is a valid point, as professors sometimes will order a book on the strength of its reviews and then find it doesn't further the objectives of the course.
Mayhew suggests, however, that online book evaluations through toolkit sites or the mid-semester evaluations that some professors already use could solve this problem. Even if professors can't do this, they could order the titles that they already have used and found effective and order others later.
The proposal is a good plan for accomplishing its purposes, but these are only small parts of a much larger problem of bookstore costs. Inevitably, some books will not be reused, and new titles will not have used copies.
Some classes, especially math and the sciences, use one large book and only change when the new edition comes out. In many classes, however, a teacher will use five to 10 smaller books. Many of these are newly published, so used copies don't exist.
Professors in the latter type of classes have high turnover in books for good reason: They want their students to read the newest ideas in the field. But professors sometimes forget the need to economize. If you haven't experienced the phenomenon of buying a new book where only a few chapters are assigned, count yourself lucky.
Many professors are catching on, though. Using toolkit sites to put an important chapter of a book on electronic reserve is gaining popularity. Professors generally use this feature to help students obtain periodical articles. However, professors could also use electronic reserve to test out a few chapters of a new book for student evaluation and then order the entire book the next semester depending on the results.
The Bookstore Advisory Board's efforts to increase professors' awareness of the problems of ordering books is a worthwhile step toward lowering book costs, but only a start. Some balance between choosing ideal texts and keeping students from selling their souls to the bookstore must be found. Professors, administrators and students must work together to strike the best balance possible.
(Elizabeth Managan's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at emanagan@cavalierdaily.com.)
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