I felt like books were overpriced when I was in college, they are insane now. I think what they did is priced themselves out of the market to a certain extent. For $50, we complained but still for the most part bought the books. Adjust that for inflation, and probably our kids should be paying $100. But when they are being charged $300, it becomes worth it to find a workaround. If they hadn’t increased prices so much, they would still be selling most of the students a book.
You can give the arguments for the reasons the prices have gone up, but the reality is that the profits are probably similar or lower than they would be if they charged a reasonable price. Instead the minority of kids who can’t find a workaround end up paying for everyone.
I almost think it’s like cable TV. If they had been less greedy, I would still have it. But there came a point where I decided that the inconvience of streaming was worth $100 a month to me.
I always sell my son’s textbooks on Ebay. I price them low to move them and get about half of my $ back. I usually buy used on Amazon but check Ebay sometimes.
D21 is taking a Spanish class at the local CC. The book cost $334- because they make you buy 24 months of access to the portal. So stupid. We found the same book with the access number for $237 at D18’s book store. Finally we found the book with access for 6 months on the publishers site for $117. The book isn’t even bound! The access to the portals is always the expensive thing. Just crazy.
Yes, you can! We always prefer hard copies but they’ve found when going to in person classes or studying somewhere else it’s much easier having access to the online version so we usually end up buying both or they get that free pdf version and print out what they need.
Yes, so crazy! I’m appreciating my D18 right now b/c she has always managed to rent or buy books for cheap herself – even mailing them back to Amazon, etc. I haven’t been involved once.
I am now realizing I need to get her to ‘train’ S21 so he does the same. I not only don’t want to pay high cost – I don’t want to be involved at all!
Are you talking about Kaiser in re to Health insurance? That just made me remember something else. Cornell requires all students to have a certain type of coverage for insurance and if you don’t have it then you need to buy their insurance plan which is like $3k. Many parents are not prepared for this and don’t qualify for the insurance waiver. For some reason I think Kaiser is one that people have problems with. But my point is not about Cornell but in general everyone should look at this in regards to the schools they are looking at for their kids as this was one of those expenses they don’t tell you about and then bam in June you find out about it. My kids have great insurance through their dad so we were ok, but many plans are not covered and I view this as just one of those hidden costs they don’t warn you about and not in the COA so just something for all to look at as another one of those extra expenses for college.
Tks for this – good advice. My D18 attends college in our home state so I knew her insurance under our family plan would be fine. Need to check this out for S21 who’s almost certainly going to college OOS.
I have a cautionary tale about renting from Amazon! My daughter took an AP Environmental class over summer via online charter school. As schools were closed in the area, we had to get the book online. Amazon seemed like the way to go as renting it was inexpensive (like $20). The book arrived and had quite a bit of water damage on the outside and the edges were frayed, but the inside was just fine. It had new Amazon stickers on the outside, so we figured Ok, it looks bad, but usable. At the end of the course, we shipped it back and Amazon said the book was damaged and billed me $150! Ack! So lesson learned is, CALL Amazon the minute the book arrives if you rent. Tell them about the damage up front & don’t wait like we did!
@jeneric foreign language books seem to be the WORST! S17 is required to take 2 semesters at his U. $250 each semester for the book! Because, of course, why would you use the same book for Elem. Italian 1 and 2? Such a scam! LOL
Maybe someone should start a thread about finding cheap books. I’m not sure about previous semesters, but this semester, while S19 is home and online, his only book expense was a $15 book we found on Amazon and delivered in 2 days. I asked him several times about any other books needed/digital fees, etc and he did not think so. I know last semester there was at least one or more digital book fees. D is dual enrollment and her books are expensive, but paid by the dual enrollment program, so does not cost us anything. She has to return the books at the end of the semester which is more than fair.
@HifromSanDiego Did you just pay the $150 or did you try to explain that it came to you that way? I wonder how reasonable Amazon is with that type of situation. Good advice to tell them about the damage up front so there isn’t a misunderstanding later. I hope they were willing to work with you and reimburse.
I agree, still! I know where you went to college for undergraduate only matters for the first job. After that no one cares and its more what you can do rather than where you went to school anyways.
@srparent15 The heck. Yup. Kaiser. I wonder if I should enroll him on my plan because we have a PPO option and I could just pay for him and myself and just have double coverage. I’m hoping PPO coverage is good enough. I think it’s well below $200 for two people on our plan. I love Kaiser Health for us. Aargh.
1 University of California, Berkeley
2 Stanford University
3 Carnegie Mellon University
4 University of Southern California
5 The University of Texas at Austin
6 Georgia Institute of Technology
7 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
8 San Jose State University
9 University of California, San Diego
10 Arizona State University
11 University of Michigan
12 University of California, Los Angeles
13 North Carolina State University
14 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
15 Cornell University
16 University of Waterloo (Canada)
17 Texas A&M University
18 University of Washington
19 Purdue University
20 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
21 Santa Clara University
22 University of Phoenix
23 University of California, Santa Barbara
24 University of California, Davis
25 Penn State University
LOL. I like how University of Phoenix is hanging with the big boys.
