College Textbooks: The Expensive Investment For Education

As school this year starts up, around the country college students begin their hunt for the best deals on textbooks. As students we’re often faced with many questions when looking for textbooks such as, “Will I really need this?” ” Should I get the older edition?” ” Should I rent or buy this book?” Shopping online adds even more questions “How do I know this is the correct book?” “Will it get here in time for my class” and so on. The real question is why are we being forced to pay so much for a book thats being printed and sold millions of times across the country and even outside the country? Many students agree that with the high tuition we pay each semester, shouldn’t the text be included? And why are we being forced to buy a textbook that a teacher swears we will use and yet never pick up. Textbooks are being sold at sky high prices yet, when we sell them back we get less then half of what we paid for, if were lucky. While luckily now were able to use sources like Amazon, eBay, and Chegg.com the prices for books is still relatively high and when you add up a full terms four or five books, there is still a hefty fee. Even now with eBooks in the picture to rent a non-tangable form of the book is still around $40.00. Students around the world are searching for ways to save where they can and textbooks seem to be one of the hardest places to do that. Hopefully in the future there will be a way to work out a new system thats fair for students and textbook sellers to receive what they want.