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36 °F Forecast | Road Cams Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Health Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Real Estate Guide Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Passport to the Rogue Valley SHOP OUR VALLEY AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Classified Place an ad TOP JOBS EXTRA Ashland News NIE Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People Volunteer Moving here? eSouthernOregon CUSTOMER SERVICE FAQ's Advertise with us Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend September 21, 2004 Southern Oregon University students Jessie Haviland and Justin Cook search the school�s bookstore Monday for textbooks they need for classes that start next week. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Coping with the cost of textbooks SOU tries to keep it cheap By ANITA BURKE Mail Tribune As textbook prices climb, the Southern Oregon University math department wants to reduce students’ financial burden. The department plans to teach calculus from the same book through 2008, even though a new edition of the text is due out in November. "Our faculty is incredibly cognizant of cost," said Jessica Kinsey, textbook manager at the SOU bookstore. As college students across the country head back to class this month, many are facing textbook prices that are higher than ever. But at some campuses — including in Ashland, where classes start next week — efforts are under way to hold costs in check. The National Association of College Bookstores says wholesale prices of college textbooks have risen nearly 40 percent in the past five years. Advertisement New editions, often linked with expensive supplemental materials, come out with increasing frequency — on average every 3.8 years, said a report issued this year by the California and Oregon Student Public Interest Research groups. New editions make it harder to find used books and the savings they offer, the report said. Leslie Nylen, a sophomore sociology student at SOU, just spent more than $200 on her fall term books. "I’m going to be on a tighter budget than I expected to be," she said. While she will walk or ride her bike instead of driving to keep her budget balanced, some of her friends delay buying books as they wait for financial aid or another paycheck, she said. "We’re paying a lot to go to school here and it’s so much more expensive to get books on top of that," said Nylen, who is active in OSPIRG. The student group worked with the math department last year and convinced professors that new editions come out too quickly with minor changes that seem designed to sell new books and cut off the used-book trade, department Chairman Kemble Yates said. When he heard a new edition of the calculus text was coming out, he contacted the bookstore about cheaper alternatives. "They looked at this calculus book and said, ‘Calculus isn’t changing. Why do we need a new book?’ " Kinsey said. With the professors’ promise that they would stick with the current text, which already carried a pricetag of more than $100, Kinsey stocked up on new and used copies to make sure students would have reasonably priced books for the next four years. "We feel we can teach effectively with the current book," Yates said. The $3.4 billion-a-year higher-education publishing industry says that it must keep its material current to win schools’ support and that prices are competitive in each market. Industry officials defend new editions, arguing that texts must be continually modernized to keep the attention of today’s college students, who are used to the graphics and interactivity of the Internet. Half of all textbooks now come "bundled," or shrink-wrapped with additional instructional materials such as CD-ROMs and workbooks, which can add cost, the research groups’ study said. Kinsey said the SOU bookstore tries to avoid such packages unless the professor wants the extra material or the publisher offers it at no added cost. Some students seek used books through multi-campus Web sites such as Books on Campus and DogEars, or even Amazon.com. OSPIRG sponsors an online book swap at www.campusbookswap.com . SOU also uses other measures to help keep book costs in check, Kinsey said. The bookstore prepares packets of copyrighted material from various sources for anthropology and sociology classes so students don’t have to buy dozens of journals or books, she said. When a business professor didn’t use all the chapters in a finance text, the publisher provided a custom version with just the necessary chapters for $54 instead of the $96 the full book cost. For several years, the bookstore has placed copies of textbooks that cost $80 or more in the campus library as reference materials. Even Congress has focused on the cost of textbooks. After hearings this summer, legislators asked the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation of college textbook prices. Reach reporter Anita Burke at 776-4485, or e-mail [email protected] . The Washington Post also contributed to this story. Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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