College students have long been plagued by the bookstores at Universities. The mean college pupil is incredibly broke, we rely on pupil loans, money from parents or our own meager incomes while we attempt to pay our tuition, room and board, and save pennies to relax stress on Friday or Saturday night.
Money is always tight for a college student. There is regularly nothing, or at best a measly wage of a incorporate hundred dollars a week that the mean pupil is foreseen, to live off of while they focus on school. Students struggle with money on a daily basis while in school, and it has always frustrated me - as a fiscally struggling pupil - that the University furthers this at least 4 times a year, when I am forced to purchase textbooks for my classes at the beginning of the semester and when I am then forced to take a fraction of the textbook's original purchase price at the end of the semester.
Bookstore
What makes this more frustrating, and if you are selling your textbooks back to the bookstore, please don't do this to your self, but if you look at what the bookstores offer you for a textbook and then look at what the "used" book is selling for, you will be shocked. Last semester, I sold a law textbook back, a book I had purchased for 5 in the fall, only to be offered when I tried to sell it back. I had used it for less than 5 months and only highlighted some of the more important topics. The unfortunate happened though, when I saw the bookstore was selling that same book as "used" to other students at the price of 5.
I have heard the discussion that bookstores need to recover their profits and it is a risk, but every semester (and I'll admit, I always register late for class), I have rarely been able to find a used textbook to purchase from the bookstore and regularly end up purchasing brand new books - many of which the bookstores refuse to purchase from me at the end of the semester. In any other industry, this type of monopoly would not be allowed to persist, however, for some theorize college students just accept this fate and allow the bookstores to behalf off of them. I have been complaining this whole article, but I don't want to just sit here and complain.
Rather than complaining, I have tried to take some action, it might be feeble, but it's good than just griping. Out of sheer frustration, I created a book transfer website (http://www.bookdefy.com), but getting students to join a free book transfer aid has been difficult. I have seen a incorporate other websites on the Internet similar to it, but most college students seem to ignore it and go for the immediate gratification of a few measly dollars for their textbooks at the end of the semester. Why? It seems like many students have tried to circumvent this deeply rooted bookstore monopoly, but most are content with the bookstore monopoly.
I have rarely heard a college pupil say "I love the bookstore" or "I can't believe how much money they gave me!" I regularly hear my fellow students complain about the bookstores and the fact that they feel like they've been ripped off. Why is it that we just sit nearby and complain rather than taking some action? There are 8 million college students in the Us, but we all seem to be in the same boat... Let me ask you why; and why hasn't someone done something about it, and if they have, why do we still "take it?"
Why Do College Students Accept The Bookstore Monopoly?
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