Beg, Borrow or Steal Textbooks?
Textbooks are a major expense for students in particular. If a student is working his way through college, budget demands can often be severe. Whilst the work experience is useful and in many cases provides an additional dimension to education, the idea of having to work for a day at minimum wage just to buy a textbook can be very sobering. Professional firms, public bodies, universities and libraries might buy in bulk and get discounts, but for the single book buyer – the typical student, say – textbook purchase can be a major expense.
Beg, borrow or steal – those are a few of the answers to the student textbook problem. Theft of textbooks is prevalent in many colleges, but it is definitely not a recommended way to ease student budget pressures. Borrowing from the college library is another solution, but when there are maybe five loan copies and thirty students needing it, then it is clearly a problem.
Begging? Well, let’s call that sharing, when maybe a group of students agree between them to split a year’s textbook list and buy a couple each, to circulate within their cohort. That is just a private library arrangement, but problems arise at exam time when everyone in the group wants to borrow. All library arrangements have this problem.
With Arts courses – for example English Literature – then much of the course may revolve around analysis of fiction and many of these works will be easily available second-hand, or inexpensively online in paperback format. Many classics are public domain and free on ereaders. For buyers trying to save on textbooks when their subjects are in rapidly changing fields, then it is much more difficult, as the number of used textbooks on the market will be reduced. Many students do hang on to their textbooks after graduation, which further compounds the supply on the used-book market.
That’s why renting books has become big business on campus.
