The Stanford Bookstore still has tons of books. The USC bookstore hardly has any, but it’s got a great selection of USC clothing and coffee mugs.
Sorry…my best recollection was how expensive those books in the bookstore cost…AND how little you were given when you wanted to sell them back to the bookstore at the end of a term.
It’s no small wonder that there is a secondary market now for used textbooks.
I do like all,the other “stuff” in those stores…the sweatshirts, car decals, mugs, teddy bears, etc.
I was just thinking about this other day . . . that the need for a college “book” store will soon be fading. One factor that will accelerate this is the significant change in the publisher’s business model. The big publishers can no longer make any money on the hard copy of the book due to the competition from re-sellers and renters. What they are doing is moving toward online platforms that offer quizzes, assignments, flashcards, etc. in addition to the e-book because they can require an access code that can only be used once. These publishers are even developing technology to grade essays! The obvious idea is that they make money from every single student in the class who has to buy the key. How do they get the professors to require students to purchase the online access? By pricing their textbooks at a ridiculous level and then offering a significant price break if the professor requires the online access or by pricing the e-book significantly lower. They also entice faculty by offering self-grading, which is obviously attractive to faculty facing ever-larger class sizes. Meanwhile, faculty members are getting stuck in the middle of this. It makes me uncomfortable that I am essentially being used to help prop up the publishers who are discovering that their old business model is quickly becoming obsolete and, in my opinion, overplayed their hand with $300 undergraduate-level textbooks.
Ulrich’s, the largest Michigan campus area bookstore is going away in the next year in the name of yet another somewhat out of scale apartment building.
Another major college bookstore bites the dust. Sad
http://dailycampus.com/stories/2016/9/22/uconns-co-op-plans-to-donate-250000-to-affordable-textbook-initiatives
My memories of buying books at the ripoff college bookstore (then getting further ripped off when selling them back at the end of the term) prohibit me from feeling sadness for the good 'ol college textbook bookstore!
“Ripoff”–as if they made enough on textbooks to buy a good lunch. Of dumb 60’s terms that is near the top.