The true costs of textbooks

We all know that textbook costs are increasing on campuses, and the distance between the price offered for a textbook via the buyback price and what that book is then sold to another student at is growing.   However, there are two factors that many do not consider when purchasing a textbook.  

The first is the actual cost of the textbook.  For most students, when they buy a new book, they are spending an immediate $100 - $200 (sometimes less or more – I have seen some books as high as $2000).   This is an immediate cost to the student, but when you consider, if that money was used for something else, there is an opportunity cost.  A student who buys 5 books in a semester could easily spend $500 to $1000. 

  

For the average student, working part time, earning (an above average wage of $10 per hour), this means that the student will net $200 per week, or $800 per month.  However, after taxes (in most areas), the student will bring in $400 - $500 per month.  Therefore, the cost of textbooks – in the immediate sense – is almost two months of wages.   This means, that if a student could avoid the costs of these textbooks, they would be able to in essence not work for two months and focus on school.   

For most students however, they do not have access to this kind of money, and many students choose (even if working) to finance their textbooks with student loans.  The problem with financing textbooks with student loans, is that these book costs have to be repaid in the future.  When you repay student loans, the student is in effect repaying up to three or four times the purchase price of the books.  Meaning, that a $100 book actually costs the student $400, and a $200 book actually costs up to $800!

On average a student takes about 44 classes to graduate, necessitating a minimum of 1 textbook for class, or 44 books.   This means the student pays $4,400 to $8,800 on textbooks.   If financed with student loans, the student will actually pay $13,200 to $26,400 for textbooks while in college!

Of course, this does not take into consideration the opportunity costs of the book, the lower grades a student receives while working in college, or the stress of being broke, or the investments that a student could make with this money (if it weren’t spent on books), or just having money to “blow off steam”. 

  

The second factor to consider with textbooks is the environmental cost.  Textbooks are printed on paper, and when using basic averages (computed at http://www.ehow.com/facts_7210331_many-trees-make-textbook_.html), it is figured that a campus with 10,000 students has the equivalent of 1,680 worth of trees being carried around in their backpacks.  Given the ever decreasing “shelf life” of the average textbook – the life before a new edition is released and required for purchase – the amount of new trees required to be cut down to fill this demand is depleting our natural resources.   

With BookDefy.com, students can recycle their used textbooks – by swapping them.   BookDefy works with professors to allow them to encourage and to assign old editions of textbooks, thus giving life to books that no one else wants, books that were otherwise destined for the landfills.