Nov. 17, 2021 Campus Voices | Climate Change | News | Textbook Prices | Raffle | Entertainment | Stang Stories | Sports 6
THE POWER AND PR
PHOTO BY COLIN STEVENSON | THE WICHITAN
Textbook pricing has made keeping up with classes difficult for some students, Nov 15. CECIL WITHERSPOON REPORTER f knowledge is power, then $780.50 buys a lot of power. Business advice books on Amazon.com can be had as inexpensively as $8, with dozens of options below $20. Books on survival check in from $12 on up. The first page of automobile repair books starts at $13 and climbs from there. $780.50 buys dozens of books, dozens of learnable skills and vast amounts of knowledge. Or, at the bookstore in Clark Student Center, it buys the radiology bundle. The books of the radiology bundle are far from the only expensive course requirements present in the bookstore. Clarkson’s Business Law is $418. Intermediate Financial Management runs $313.50. The Jensen Assessment 3E Coursepoint comes in at $297.25. The Aventuras loose-leaf for elementary Spanish is $251. While the price tags may fluctuate, the requirement of these books and resources is far from arbitrary. Professors select these textbooks or packages based on several criteria, including accessibility, resources available, ease of use, understandability and yes, price. The professors of some of the classes with the highest course requirement costs say they are aware of the
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prices that textbooks can reach and have worked to ensure that their classes produce the most value for the money being spent on them. They balance the financial strain it places on students with the value that it provides them both in the class and in life.
THE PROBLEM
Linda Treitler, assistant professor of nursing, said textbook prices are a problem. She also added that she is most concerned for international students. “They don’t even have the authority to work outside of campus, so they’re always kind of restricted on their finances. I’ve had students who would register for classes and not be able to get their books and have to eventually drop out because they couldn’t keep up,” Treitler said. Treitler taught the Family Health Assessment course, which requires the $297 Jensen Assessment 3E Coursepoint, and now teaches pathophysiology. The Nursing Pharmacology textbook has an equal price tag of $297, and other books routinely run upwards of $100.
THE PROCESS
Across campus in Prothro-Yeager Hall, Sarah Butler, instructor of Spanish, teaches elementary Span-
ish using a $251 Aventuras loose-leaf and said textbook prices are an issue. She said that the Spanish department takes that into consideration when they adopt new textbooks. “Every professor has their own way of evaluating what type of book that they use,” Rodney Fisher, assistant professor of radiologic sciences, said. “There’s several different types of books out there that you can use for a given subject.” Fisher uses the $780 radiology bundle in his classes and explained that the bundle is composed of individual books selected by different professors. The process for choosing those books varies by department and even by professor. For Treitler, who has taught multiple nursing courses, she said it sometimes has come down to experimenting with what is the easiest for her students to use. “There have been times that I chose a textbook because I wanted to check out the resources that they had, how the electronic resources worked and if they
Assistant professor Linda Treitler expresse for international students since they can’t a
