Trashing Textbook Troubles
I personally love the feeling of walking out of a store with a newly purchased book in my hands; the prospect of diving into a wonderful world built purely upon written words is what creates anticipation and excitement in the part of me that just revels in reading a good story. On the other hand, I do not share the same feeling walking out of the UH Manoa bookstore with my hands full of the textbooks for my classes; just the look of those textbooks is enough to stress me out, not only with all the schoolwork that comes with it, but also with how much those books cost and what I’ll have to do with them after the semester ends. As current college students, we know all too well about textbook troubles: trying to find the cheapest, used book there is, buying them, and then selling them for probably a fraction of the price that we bought it for. These troubles are heightened if we don’t even use the textbook or if we can’t even sell the book back to the bookstore because it will not be used in the next semester. Of course, those of us who have enough financial aid, scholarships, or have parents helping to pay do not need to worry too much about buying textbooks, but we all still need to decide what to do with those bulky textbooks after the semester ends.
What’s the Trouble with Textbooks?
UH Manoa’s Spring 2017 Tuition– including fees – for general undergraduate students taking twelve or more credits is $5,866 for resident students and $16,822 for non-resident students. That is not including the cost of dorming – if the student dorms – and not including the cost of textbooks and school supplies – which may vary depending on the student’s major. As reported by the College Board, the average college student spends an average of $1,250 on textbooks and supplies (for a public, four-year college). If we attend college for 4 years, that means by the time that we graduate, we would have spent about $5,000 worth of textbooks and supplies; that’s almost an entire semester’s worth (for resident students) of tuition spent entirely on books and supplies for class. It’s true that most of us probably have some form of financial aid – whether it’s from FAFSA or from scholarships – but that money should mostly go towards paying the actual tuition and not towards additional costs like textbooks.
Aside from increasing the overall cost of attending college, print textbooks are heavy, often bulky, and just take up too much room; and when the semester is over, what do we do with those textbooks? Do we sell it back to the bookstore at a fraction of the price we bought it for? If the bookstore does not buy the book back, then what do we do? Do we try to sell it online? Do we keep it and do nothing with it? I and many other students are faced with these questions. I sold my books back to the bookstore last semester during the buyback period; for a couple of the books that I bought for $120 and $75, I only got $70 and $35, respectively, back. Why does the bookstore think that the price of the textbooks falls that much over the course of 4 months? Also, the textbook I bought for my BUS200 class at $200 was not bought back by the bookstore. I still have that BUS200 textbook, but I have no idea what to do with it and it just takes up room.
The only situation where we don’t need to worry about buying textbooks is when we have classes that don’t have any required textbooks for the course. I was lucky enough to have three classes so far that did not have any required books, but it will not always be like that for other classes. While we cannot control how much the school charges us for tuition and fees, I believe that we do have at least some control over textbooks. Yes, it’s our professors who assign required material for the course, but it’s up to us how to acquire those materials and in what form.
Luckily, in today’s day and age, there is a solution to this textbook struggle: digital textbooks, also known as e-textbooks. Even though I personally prefer to read my beloved novels as real, printed novels rather than as e-books, my opinion on e-textbooks are completely different. I can say that I definitely do not prefer physical, hard copy textbooks to the more convenient digital e-textbook. E-textbooks are most of the time significantly cheaper than hard copy textbooks, and they are immensely more convenient; we can take them almost anywhere with us on our laptops, tablets, or even our phones. On another note, another benefit of e-textbooks is that, compared to a used textbook, they have no ripped, bent, or damaged pages with excessive underlining, highlighting, or messy notes in the margins from the previous owner. E-textbooks will often allow us to highlight and underline words with the option to delete them later, and we don’t have to deal with looking at whatever the previous owner did to the book. Of course, there are drawbacks to the e-books. Sometimes, it will be difficult to find a specific textbook as an e-book, forcing us to buy the physical copy. E-books also require an electronic device, which not all of us may have a reliable access to. Although it may not be a solution that completely solves the textbook problem, e-textbooks can significantly help reduce the stress of the textbook struggle.
Are E-Textbooks Even Worth it?
To personally find out whether or not finding e-textbooks is as great as it seems, I searched for the textbooks I had to buy last semester and the textbooks that I purchased for this semester as well to see if I could actually find e-textbooks that were cheaper than the physical copies that I bought from the UH bookstore. To my amazement, I found some. For example, this semester I am taking MATH203, and the required textbook for that class was about $170; the digital e-textbook I found was $94.94 for a 180-day digital rental. I also found my microeconomics textbook from my ECON130 class last semester that I bought for about $75; the e-textbook was $34.08. Another good example I found was the textbook for my HIST151 class last semester that I got for about $120; I found the e-textbook version that was $70.22, proving that e-books really can save us money on textbook expenses.
They Work . . . So What Are You Waiting For?
What I want all you students at UH Manoa – or just any college student – to do is to consider using e-textbooks as an alternative to physical textbooks. The UH Manoa bookstore has a Digital Textbook link on its website, and if you click the link, it will take you to a page where they offer digital textbooks at a price that is often less than the physical copy of the book. So, when you find yourself buying textbooks for classes next semester, seriously consider e-textbooks because they can save you money that is better spent on something more meaningful and long lasting. Just imagine, with all the money you save, you could spend more time making more memories with friends.
