Textbooks don't have to cost a lot

Well, my little summer vacation is over and it's back to graduate school for me. I don't really mind the school work (much), but I always dread buying textbooks because they are so expensive! I got a bit of sticker shock when I checked the price of the textbook for my class that starts this week. The book was $232.00 brand new in my school's bookstore! I simply could not see myself spending that much money on a book I would probably use very little after I complete the class in December.

I checked Amazon and Half.com; the usual places where I purchase used textbooks, but I was still hesitant to spend $60 which was the cheapest price I could find for this particular book. I decided that I would check out this book rental website called http://www.chegg.com/ I heard about from classmates and also read about in the newspaper this summer. You can also sell used books to Chegg and receive payment for them. Chegg plants a tree for every book donated. So not only are you saving money, you're 'being green' at the same time.

I found the book I was looking for on the site am renting it for the semester for $19.99! That sure beats buying it brand new for as much as I sometimes spend on food in a month! This site was around when I was in college, but I'd never heard of it back then (I could have saved SO much money...). If you are currently a student or know students and haven't heard of the site like me, check it out.

Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free

I don't think any of my graduate school professors are doing this, but I still found this New York Times article interesting:

SQUINT hard, and textbook publishers can look a lot like drug makers. They both make money from doing obvious good — healing, educating — and they both have customers who may be willing to sacrifice their last pennies to buy what these companies are selling. It is that fact that can suddenly turn the good guys into bad guys, especially when the prices they charge are compared with generic drugs or ordinary books. A final similarity, in the words of R. Preston McAfee, an economics professor at Cal Tech, is that both textbook publishers and drug makers benefit from the problem of “moral hazards” — that is, the doctor who prescribes medication and the professor who requires a textbook don’t have to bear the cost and thus usually don’t think twice about it.

“The person who pays for the book, the parent or the student, doesn’t choose it,” he said. “There is this sort of creep. It’s always O.K. to add $5.”In protest of what he says are textbooks’ intolerably high prices — and the dumbing down of their content to appeal to the widest possible market — Professor McAfee has put his introductory economics textbook online free. He says he most likely could have earned a $100,000 advance on the book had he gone the traditional publishing route, and it would have had a list price approaching $200.

“This market is not working very well — except for the shareholders in the textbook publishers,” he said. “We have lots of knowledge, but we are not getting it out.”

I am currenly pricing textbooks for the second session of my first semester of grad school and will try to pay as little as possible for them...but nothing beats free!

Why are textbooks so expensive?

Why are textbooks for my first graduate class totaling up to $150???

I guess being out of school for two years made me blank out how expensive textbooks tend to be.

Here are steps I plan to take to minimize the cost of textbooks now that I've learned my lesson that used textbooks never last long in my school's bookstore:

1. Check the library at the begining of the semester to see if they have the textbooks I need
2. Check websites such as half.com and amazon (anybody know of others?) for used books
3. Ask other students if they are selling books for classes they have already taken

These steps may take more time than just putting down the money for new books, but it's worth the savings.

Should I Go Back to School ? - Part II

I am officially a student again. I applied and got accepted into a graduate program here in DC and will soon start classes. I did not want to post about this until it was a done deal. In this previous post, I weighed some of the positive and negative points of going back to school for a graduate degree. Although I will be financing my degree with student loans, in the long run, more education will increase my earning potential and expand my skills and I expect to also gain new ones. As I have mentioned previously, I am a nerd and enjoy learning so while I expect juggling a full-time job and classes to be challenging, I believe I can do it. I plan to do updates on my progress on my classes and how going back to school will impact my finances.