After I registered for my courses for Winter Term 2012 at Southern Oregon University, I decided to check out the books I would have to get for this upcoming term.  To see the price of them.

After looking at them through the bookstores website, it would cost me 376.75 dollars to get my textbooks USED.  Overkill right?

And here’s the kicker, I WOULD be saving 113 bucks.  It would be 489.75 bucks to get my books brand spanking new from the SOU bookstore.

It should be consider overkill with these high cost of textbooks ontop of the thousands of dollars that a University would charge it’s students a term.

The reason for the high cost of books?  To make a marginal gain.

Understandable, it’s a business they are running.  To make a profit on supplies that they purchase for their buyers.  Simply Economical.

But at a five to six-percent profit to make a quick buck?

In 1992 at SOU it was how much the Bookstore was making on textbooks to cover it’s cost.  They also racked up 40,000 dollars more through students to help out that year.

19 years after the fact, you figure those figures would be bigger in terms of inflation.

On the website, they have comparable prices from Amazon.com, Textbooks.com as well as having 30-,45, 90-day rentals through the bookstore that are easliy a fourth, (25-percent), of what the bookstore offers for the whole book.

The highest price I saw was no more than half what the bookstore was offering for.

Is it totally a business there running?  Is it economical?

I say yes to the fact you need to cover your losses and make a small profit to stay in business.  Espically if you make options, like renting the book electronically to students or to have them compare them to other sites like a Amazon, possible for them to view.

At the same time, I say no because, as a student espically, you don’t want to pay 400+ bucks for books that the teacher might only make refernce to probably no more than a dozen times during a nin-. 10-week term.  Also, students don’t have too much finaincal aid to cover the rising cost of textbooks on top of the rising cost of tuition, fees, room and board; the whole nine yards of college.

Is it overkill?  You can make the arugment so.  That “the man is sticking it to you” again with hiking the prices again.  That college might be getting to expensive because of price hikes like this.  That the bookstore is charging too much for a book that the teacher might barely use, or ultimatley not use at all.

My philosophy on it is this:  Wait until the first day of class, wait until the teacher assigns the book.  Because until class begins, you might’ve just spent hundreds of dollars on a book that you didn’t need.

So, is it overkill to hike the textbook prices?  Yes and no.  It’s screwed up, yes but the arugment rages on.