With high textbook prices, students turn to Internet

Nationwide, college students are putting big dents into their bank accounts to purchase textbooks. Norwich students are leaning towards alternate methods to ensure they have all the class materials needed.

The Norwich University bookstore is the only place on campus to purchase all textbooks at a set price, but the costs have students looking for ways to avoid the bookstore to save some cash, according to some Norwich University students.

Students majoring in nursing and engineering often have a much longer and more expensive booklist. Not only do students have to purchase their texts from the bookstore, but other class materials such as graphing paper. 

"I had to purchase ‘Essentials of Surveying,' it was $160 for the book itself and then I had to spend extra money to get the note-taking gear, as well as the paper to answer my homework," said Richard Snyder, a 20-year-old sophomore engineering management major from Bucyrus, Ohio. 

"This semester I spent $590 on textbooks," Snyder said "and by senior year, my books are expected to cost over $750."

These high textbook prices are causing students to look for alternate locations to purchase their books, such as online sites or from students who have taken the course in previous years. 

Online Web sites are often used by students who are willing to wait to save money on their books, seeing as how most shipping orders can take up to two weeks to arrive. 

"Primarily, I go to amazon.com, there is also half.com. For this semester, there was a book that cost $40 in the bookstore, and I bought it online, brand new, for eight," said Andrew Prochnow, a 21-year old senior studies of war and peace and history double major from Freehold, N.J.

The bookstore is efficient because the textbooks are available right there when needed at the beginning of the school year. But some students wonder if it is worth the extra cash.

"As it gets closer to the beginning of the school year, the bookstore has a Web site that you can go to and you put in your class and what section you are in and it will tell you what books you need," Prochnow said. This makes it easier for students to order their books prior to the school year to ensure they arrive before classes start. 

Some students just believe that it is easier to purchase books at the bookstore and not have to worry about when the textbooks are going to come in.  It is worth it to them to have all the textbooks they need, when they need them. 

"It is a lot easier to just go to the bookstore and buy something when I need it," said Thomas McKinnon, a 19-year-old sophomore engineering management major from Haddam, Conn. 

 The bookstore also has helpful employees to make sure that students find the correct books for the classes they are taking. "All I do is show them my schedule and they help me find all the books I need," McKinnon said.

Even though the prices of books at the bookstore seem extraordinarily high to students, the convenience of the bookstore still has many students buying their books there every semester.  

Although it is handy, the bookstore does not always have what the students need. 

"They were short on engineering paper and all of our forms had to be submitted on engineering paper," Snyder said. "I had to wait almost a week to get my project complete."

The high prices of the bookstore have students angry enough and when the bookstore does not have all the materials needed for students to complete their work, it just makes it that much more stressful.

According to a bookstore employee, the textbooks prices are provided by a private company who refused to participate in an interview.