Trust can lower book costs
We rarely look at the cost of textbooks as an expense that stands in the way of education, but that is what it has become. To make matters worse, college bookstores abuse their monopoly on book purchases made with financial aid vouchers. In checking a textbook, I have found an exorbitant price from the publisher, a 36% markup over the publisher's wholesale price to the bookstore, and a 50% reduction below the publisher's ...more »
We rarely look at the cost of textbooks as an expense that stands in the way of education, but that is what it has become. To make matters worse, college bookstores abuse their monopoly on book purchases made with financial aid vouchers. In checking a textbook, I have found an exorbitant price from the publisher, a 36% markup over the publisher's wholesale price to the bookstore, and a 50% reduction below the publisher's price in online bookstores. The reason bookstores can sell for prices that are 250% of what students get elsewhere is that they have the unique capacity to accept federal aid book vouchers. But what if, instead of vouchers, students requesting financial aid received money? When we think that they will use it for other purposes, we mean that we do not trust them to spend book money for books. The result is that $2.50 of tax dollars gets spent for every $1 that needs to be spent. Let's do away with financial aid vouchers and get the student an account with money that can be spent for books. These are our students. Let's stop treating them like second class citizens unless that's what we expect them to become.
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