Do you have sticker shock every time you visit your college bookstore? Are the costs of your books pricing you out of school? The Connecticut Board of Governors for Higher Education may agree with you.
In a report issued in January 2006, the Board made the following recommendations that all Connecticut colleges and universities should follow:
- Faculty members should know the price of textbooks they select for their courses in advance of ordering them
- To assist faculty members as they make these considerations, college and university bookstores – whether independent or part of a larger chain – should establish a process by which information about the prices of various textbooks will be provided to faculty members.
- Bibliographies should be available to students, for all courses, well in advance of the beginning of each term whenever possible or available, so that students might plan their book purchasing
- Faculty should be encouraged to use textbooks for multiple terms or years, or in multiple courses.
- The practice of “bundling” course materials should stop. In that practice, various materials – textbooks, workbooks, CD-ROMs, and other elements – are shrink-wrapped and sold as a single package to students.
- To ensure the success of a multiple term or multiple year plan to use a particular textbook, bookstores should institute programs to encourage such use
- The college or university library – or, where appropriate, departmental libraries – should have on reserve at least one copy of each textbook used in each respective course.
- Financial aid processes should be enhanced so that students automatically receive credits at the bookstore at the beginning of the term
- Bookstores should be encouraged to be more responsive to student concerns, especially with regard to used textbooks
How do you feel about this issue? Please post a comment. Thanks!
2 comments:
I'm a student at CCC. I can not afford all of my textbooks this semester, so, assuming that there would be copies of my course texts available in the library, I only purchased the cheapest books. I figured that would be more economical. I was furious and devastated upon learning that CCC's library does not have copies of the books I could not buy! Luckily, I take advantage of the Hartford Consortium by taking courses at another College where the books were available.
CCC should REQUIRE at least one copy of each course textbook to be in the library. Those books should also be requires to be in the library by the second week of a semester.
I agree with our friend anonymuos, the school should have in the library at least one copy of each of the different textbooks. Some students cannnot afford those books, specially the ones that are very expensive.
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