Textbooks are a risky but necessary investment for students.
Each semester, the average USMer drops between two and three hundred dollars on their assigned textbooks – a significant stressor on any student’s typically thin wallet.
Ideally, most of these expenditures could be recouped through the textbooks buyback service offered by the USM bookstore. However many are not happy with the exchange rates offered on their semester-old texts, or are refused buyback because of low demand.
With this in mind, the USM student senate presented and passed the Textbook Resolution unanimously through the faculty senate last Friday in an effort to alleviate the burden on cash-strapped students and give them a fair return on their investments.
Drafted by the student senate, the resolution addresses what USM faculty can do to make the buyback process more profitable for students.
The senate based the resolution on a textbook survey conducted by the student senate student affairs committee, which asked nearly 500 students what they thought of the current textbook buyback system.
Around 63 percent of students surveyed reported getting back “very little of what I paid” during their textbook exchanges.
Strategies of the resolution include asking USM faculty to supply their list of next semester’s texts prior to the buyback period. Without such lists, the bookstore has no way of knowing which texts they need to stock up on, and will routinely refuse to buy back a text that might actually be required in the coming semester.
The resolution also asks faculty to consider reusing the same texts from semester to semester “when it does not undermine the academic experience of the student,” as well as increasing the use of electronic texts, and posting assigned readings on Blackboard to cut text related costs.
It also addresses the USM University Bookstore’s practice of offering higher rates of return for students who return books earlier in the buy-back period; a practice that can cause students to feel pressured into selling back their texts before finals week.
“I’m not at all sympathetic to the idea that students should be selling their textbook before finals,” said Political Science professor Michael Hamilton.
University Bookstore Director Nikki Piaget notes that the bookstore often has to spend more in ordering and shipping new texts, and would much rather work with students to keep recycling the same books.
The survey also found that the “extras” or supplementary materials that come bundled with some texts, which according to the survey are rarely used by students. The Bookstore does not currently accept these extras for buyback.
The resolution also asks that at least one copy of each assigned text be made available on reserve in USM’s libraries, to make them available “regardless of cost” for all students.