A New Chapter for Campus Bookstores
By Tim Goral
Rental programs and new technologies are helping to make textbooks more affordable.
universitybusiness.com
T
he campus booksTore aT Tallahassee CommuniTy College (Fla.) uncovered a problem in the course of its annual student survey. “What we noticed last spring was that more and more students were not buying textbooks, period,” says Vice president and chief Financial officer Teresa smith. “They told us that in our surveys. They wrote comments like, ‘I just didn’t buy my textbook this semester’ or ‘I borrowed the chapters I needed from a friend when it was time to study for an exam.’” The reason most often cited, smith says, was the cost. “most of them said they didn’t have the money or didn’t want to spend that much on a textbook. some said they couldn’t afford all their textbooks, or would only buy a few and get by with borrowing the rest. That troubled us greatly, because we know that students who do not have access to textbooks do not finish the course, or they finish it with less than desirable results and they can’t transfer.” Textbook costs have risen as much as 60 percent in recent years, according to the
April 2010 | 41
http://www.universitybusiness.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - April 2010