8 years ago
3
College Textbook Prices Have Risen 1,041 Percent Since 1977
Students hitting the college bookstore this fall will get a stark lesson in economics even before they've cracked open their first chapter.
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I assume this was sarcastic as getting maybe 5% back from what you originally paid is less value to me than just keeping them to refer to later.
When I started taking more specialized classes, I just kept my books so that I could reference them at any point in my career, build a personal library, etc. In retrospect, it may have been my own personal way of justifying the cost of the books.
And you're right, it's even a hassle trying to sell to other students, or to find students who even want them. Some of my classes would assign a book one semester, then a different book the next, so my friend's taking those classes couldn't even use my book. I also ran into an issue where a math class actually assigned a BINDER, not a book, for over $100. It was ridiculous and when I went back to the campus bookstore at the end of the semester, they said, "Tough luck, we don't buy back these."
I had that experience as well. The new edition would come outwith different problems therefore other students couldn't buy it from me. I also had a math class where the book was written by the professor and we had to get it through the local shop. Nice thing was all the problems could be written out in the space given but forget about getting anything for that.
In grad school I just rented or borrowed from the library and used my textbooks from undergrad as reference.