Textbooks are notoriously known for ending up in the corners of most students’ rooms until the final day of having to turn them in. Although they are a useful source of information, most students will leave the dusty books under their beds. These books can be used to gain knowledge, but there are also more efficient and effective ways to supply the same knowledge to students. Do we really need them?
Necessity is not one of the main words a student thinks of when they hear the word “textbook;” this is mainly due to being in the age of the Internet. With a computer, every minuscule bite of information is ready at our fingertips with a click of a button. Why do we need to buy a required book when most of the information can be found on the Internet? The Internet holds terabytes of information that could help students solve any problem or create any question, if that’s what the student needed. With websites on the Internet like Chegg, Wolfram Alpha, and, let’s be honest, Yahoo Answers, textbooks are left untouched. These websites can offer a related problem or even the same problem valid solutions. Most students would pick up their laptop before ever thinking about opening their textbook.
The environmental distress of making textbooks is also another factor as to why textbooks are not completely necessary. Every year, millions of sheets of paper are printed and bound into textbooks; this has caused many trees to be cut down. With the already depleting number of trees, our society should support the act to become paperless. Not cutting down trees for textbooks will be one less factor that will hurt the environment. Publishing companies also give the option to buy the online version of the textbook. Even though it is better for the environment, students still have to pay an ungodly price for an e-book.
The cost. Publishing companies demand for students to pay a premium to get a textbook that is required. The National Association of College Stores (NACS) estimated that the average cost a student pays for textbooks each semester is $655. An economics professor at University of Michigan has researched the cost of textbooks. He found that there has been an increase of 812 percent in the cost of textbooks since 1978. Remember when we did not have to pay for textbooks in grade school? Oh, the times have changed. The publishing companies also write multiple editions for books. Even if there is a paragraph different, they can claim it as a new and up-to-date edition, and charge extra for it. And as Murphy’s Law goes, the newer edition is the one always required for class. It is unfathomable why these publishing companies make students pay so much for books, especially when there are so many students paying for their own college. When buy-back season starts at the end of the semester, even if the book was unused, students will only get about 30 percent of what they originally paid for it. That is not even mentioning the loose-leaf textbooks, which are originally almost the same price as a hardcover textbook. The bookstore does not buy back loose-leaf textbooks. Money that a student spent on loose-leaf textbooks has ultimately gone down the drain.
Publishing companies should stop increasing the cost of textbooks, or else students will look for a cheaper option to supplement their education. Textbooks are great and all, but at what cost?
