Rising book prices drive students online

By Josh Rutenberg     9/3/09 7:00pm

Amidst all the financial constraints swirling in 2009, students are looking to cut costs at every corner. For most, that entails pinching pennies in textbook fees.From scouring online marketplaces, to turning to the Student Association, to settling for the stacks at Fondren Library, students like Erica Herris have gone to many lengths to save money on their books.

"My books were $50 cheaper online," Harris, a Wiess College freshman, said. She added that she bought several of her textbooks on Amazon.com this year, purchasing only a few textbooks at the Rice Bookstore.

Other students took a more local approach, seeking out friends and fellow students who took the course in previous years. The Student Association's Textbook Marketplace, a Web site where students can post textbooks for sale or search for textbooks to buy, has led to a network for buying and selling textbooks among students. Jones College senior Susan Wu is one of several students using this system, which was started a few years ago.

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"I usually buy from Half.com or Amazon, but [textbooks] I can't get online I get from other students," Wu said. "It doesn't work well for intro classes, but in upper division classes it does."

But Amazon and the Textbook Marketplace have not been the only alternatives available for Rice students wishing to avoid the full price of textbooks. In 1999, the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Engineering Richard Baraniuk presented his project, Connexions, at a Rice Alliance meeting. Connexions, a Web site that provides an alternative to physical textbooks, allows students and faculty to create small sections of information called "modules," then edit and organize them into textbooks specific to the course of a professor.

Electrical and computational engineering professor Don Johnson said he found the Connexions module more convenient than using the bookstore.

"I can write the notes, fix errors easily, print-on-demand, and it has exactly the material I need for my courses," Johnson said.

Johnson, the first professor to contribute to Connexions, said students can either access the material online for free or order a copy through the Bookstore for around $20.

Johnson said textbook prices have gotten out of hand in recent years, as some textbooks have risen to $120 for around 300 pages, compared with the $20 textbooks he uses in his electrical engineering classes.

Some professors have provided their students with alternative means to buying the books, or have found comparable books at better prices. French studies professor Julie Fette said she sends her students to French Web sites so that they can purchase the textbooks for her classes at more reasonable prices.

"[The Language Department] has problems with the cost of books in foreign languages," Assistant Professor of French Studies Julie Fette said. "Translation creates a large markup at the bookstore."

The reserves at Fondren Library also allow Fette and other professors to set aside books for students, which provides an option for classes such as Fette's that work from a variety of texts instead of a single textbook.

Professor of Humanities Deborah Nelson-Campbell provides her students with a packet specifically tailored to her class, instead of a traditional textbook. Several years ago, Nelson-Campbell said she began putting together a packet that better suited the needs of her course. The rising cost of textbooks has not escaped her notice either.

"I used to use an anthology, but it didn't have the selection I wanted," Nelson-Campbell said. "I don't know what the prices [of textbooks] were then, but now they're exorbitant.

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