Paying for more than just a textbook?
Financially beleaguered college students and parents bled dry by skyrocketing tuition probably won't be thrilled to find their favorite institution of higher learning is marking up their textbooks, too.
The Elgin Community College bookstore, for example, makes more than half a million dollars in profit annually, subsidizes other campus operations and carries nearly $1 million in reserves.
Who's funding that cash-rich operation? Students and their parents, of course.
A Public Interest Research Group study showed typical campus bookstores mark up textbooks by about 25 percent. For community college students, the annual cost of books is nearing the cost of a semester's tuition. A 2006 Illinois Board of Higher Education study showed the average community college student pays $941 to $1,027 for books a year. Tuition at ECC for the coming year is $2,370.
The money generated by bookstore profit-taking on books and sales of other items like clothing and souvenirs have helped subsidize ECC's new WiFi system, the Child Care Center for the children of ECC students and employees, and the Visual and Performing Arts Center.
The bookstore donated $347,000 to other campus budget areas in 2006. The rest of the cash surplus of $230,000 was added to the bookstore's reserves, now nearly a million dollars.
In typical scholarly fashion, ECC leaders justify pumping up the price of textbooks by saying, "you can pay us here or pay us in higher tuition." But at least if costs are paid through tuition, they are visible. Students and parents can make a choice about attending based on real costs. Students buying mandatory books have no such choice and the costs are hidden.
Further, college leaders have to publicly justify tuition hikes in some fashion; not that they've been shy about implementing them to the point that it has become all but habitual.
But at some point, those buying what the college has to offer will begin to question the value of that purchase -- and the fact that little effort is being made to corral and stabilize ever-rising expenditures, especially in areas of personnel costs.
ECC certainly is not unique in its constantly rising tuition and it's unlikely, given the PIRG study, that its profit taking at the bookstore is all that unusual, either. We urge all parents and students to check out whether they're being gouged at the bookstore no matter where they attend, for there are many options made available by the Internet.
Just a quick online search for a basic biology text, "Environmental Science: Working with the Earth," by G. Tyler Miller turned up a variety of costs. You could buy it new at ECC for $118 and for $114.95 at College of DuPage and Triton Community College. But you could buy a new one at Amazon.com for $66.95 or a used one for $40. A new book at textbookx.com cost $59.94 and biblio.com had one listed for $24.10.
That is a wide variety of prices for one book, and the highest are found in your local college bookstore.
Buyer beware. You may be buying a lot more than just a book.