Matt Kemmerle, science major, has an opinion that most City College students likely share: He believes textbooks prices are inflated. Kemmerle says he’s paid more than $700 for textbooks this semester – and he’s only enrolled in three courses.

“What you’re really seeing when you look into a college bookstore are publishing companies and professors earning their wages off the backs of poor students,”
Kemmerle says.

Complaints like Kemmerle’s have not fallen on deaf ears at City College. On Nov.
7, ASG’s textbook crisis committee met to discuss exorbitant textbook prices.

“It’s an issue we are attacking on many fronts,” says committee chair and ASG Senator Steve Macias.

Many options were discussed at the meeting, from offering a wider variety of textbooks to simply considering ways to reduce prices. One of the ideas proposed
was the development of a bookstore rental policy, which might do well in mitigating
high book costs. The City College bookstore manager Randy Clem, told the group that in Missouri, 50 percent of college textbooks are rentals.

“Our biggest obstacles are the book adoption terms, which must be changed
so that the same books are used for longer durations,” Macias says.

In other words, teachers would have to agree to use the same textbook edition for a number of years, so that the bookstore could reuse the same rentals each
semester.

Another facet of the committee’s plan for lowering book costs involves increased use of open source material. Open source refers to material that is in the public domain and therefore accessible to the public at no cost.

“We definitely have some short term goals we want to achieve this semester,”
Macias said. One of these goals is to highlight the importance of teachers and faculty getting their book orders in on time.

“Efficiency helps. If teachers put their book orders in on time, then the book store manager has a bigger pool of textbooks to choose from,” Macias says. “Plus, a late order must then be rushed to school which involves additional charges that could have been avoided.”

Other measures discussed include offering more copies of texts on reserve in the library and a student and staff letterwriting campaign, targeted at teachers and deans, as well as prominent district employees and legislators.