Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Cost of Textbooks

The use of reserves is on the rise this semester. There are more books being put on reserve and they are being used more often. Why? So during a fire alarm I went over to the bookstore to see how much textbooks actually cost. Unfortunately the textbook area was roped off, but the student behind the desk was bored and happy to look up prices for me.



Introductory Biology - $76
Introductory Chemistry - $300 (used for both semesters)
Calculus - $228 (used for the whole calculus series)
Physics 114 - $200 (they actually use two text books)
Mechanical Engineering 120 - $163



Yikes! A freshman science major could spend more than $500 their first semester on books? Of course, it would be much less the second semester, but that's a lot of money even to me. I need to go back with a real course schedule and see how much the textbooks would cost.



By sophomore year they know to buy their books on Amazon. I'll have to check that out with a list of real books to see how much money they save.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

To help reduce the cost of textbooks try shopping at www.TextbookStop.com. I like that I can rent textbooks or buy cheap textbooks from one place. They put the prices side by side, and made it easy for me to choose. It makes sense for me to rent some books and buy others. This term, I rented two textbooks and bought three in the same order. They also shipped my order out the day.