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And all those bookstores are reaping such high profits the owners are living in mansions. Better to send the money to some out of state sweatshop than to spend it locally in a place that actually employs many students and local people.
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<p>In the case of the bookstore at the community college where S is taking dual-credit classes, the college runs the bookstore, and the profits are rolled back into the college funds. The books are kept behind a counter and students aren't allowed to go back there. You have to present your fee statement at which time the cashier will go fetch your books for you.</p>
<p>When we went by a couple of weeks before class to find out the names of the books, we were told, "those decisions haven't been finalized yet". The names of books are not listed online or anywhere else. It's a big state secret.</p>
<p>So, as someone here suggested, S bought his $175 calculus book, brought it home, found and ordered it online (new) for $125, then returned the book.</p>
<p>The thing that burns me about this is that most of the kids at that college are relatively poor. We paid $500 for books for 3 classes. That's just not right.</p>
<p>I made $164 this month by selling some of my son's textbooks on half.com. Unfortunately, I think he spent more then twice that buying his new ones. Son actually called me while I was working (at my library!) with the ISBN numbers of his needed textbooks to see if I could find them on-line less expensive then he could get them used at the bookstore. I could only find three that were cheaper!</p>
<p>I think The Crimson missed the real story entirely. Here is a venerable 125-year-old bookstore, familiar to thousands and thousands of MIT and Harvard alums, and they don't seem to have entered the on-line age. Why is it not possible for anyone to logon and see what books are being read for what course? Imagine the extra sales, as alums and others decided to do the reading for Harvard and MIT courses. Back when I lived in the Boston suburbs, my husband and I would regularly go to the MIT branch and browse the new textbooks when he needed to find the latest information.</p>
<p>The textbook Dept asks profs to estimate how many students will attend the class and orders accordingly, from 5 to 1000. By and large, as far as I can tell, syllabi are available online to students ahead of time.<br>
I don't know if it would be wise for the COOP to advertise far and wide what it has ordered for various courses and run out of copies for the students. It's already a perennial complaint since Harvard does not have pre-registration and so enrollments estimates can be quite off, as for the course S took that was expected to have 35 but ended up with 277. The COOP also has a very lenient return policy. It functions so much more efficiently than in my days!</p>
<p>Marite, I think you missed my point. The Coop is a profit-making enterprise. Think how much more money it could make if it were willing to put everything on line for the world to buy (if it offered the same services as the online shops). Then the prices of textbooks could be reduced--for the benefit of the students it's supposed to be serving. Then, instead of castigating students for writing down ISBN numbers, the students could be ordering online and picking up their books.</p>
<p>But the COOP is only a middleman. If it puts everything online, there is no reason for the students not to buy things online from, say Amazon. In fact, much of the information is already available to the students online. The syllabi may not carry ISBN, but these are not difficult to find.<br>
So why do students still go to the COOP to buy books? because they want the books right away; because they want the convenience of being able to return them if they decide not to take the course (or if they can find a cheaper version online). If the COOP sold books online, I'm not sure that it would make any profit (it would have to cover handling & shipping, which it is not currently equipped to do).
I'm not sure that Amazon.com has been very profitable, and it sells best-sellers. I can order lots of academic books straight from the publishers.</p>
<p>Amazon is a profitable company. The Coop does indeed sell bestsellers, at least at their MIT store. My point is that, by expanding to a national audience of MIT and Harvard graduates, they could expand their customer base, increase sales, and lower prices all at once. Since the Coop returns all profits in the form of a rebate to customers, it would be beneficial all the way around.</p>
<p>The Coop currently will ship anywhere in the US, but you have to call them to make such arrangements. I have bought both books and MIT-logo clothing from them that way.</p>
<p>The COOP does indeed sell best-sellers, but that's not the textbook dept. I don't know that I would want the COOP to turn into another version of Amazon.com (the commercial part is already run by Barnes & Noble).</p>
<p>In fact, I'd see very little incentive for profs to send their book lists to the COOP if it turned into a local version of Amazon.com. They usually send in their list some time in July for the COOP to order the books and have them in stock before classes begin. The COOP has to prod the profs into sending in their lists by July, as mid-September seems far away.</p>
<p>Hank Brown, the president of the University of Colorado, dealt with this issue in a much better way a couple of years ago -- he mandated that the University provide the textbook data to anyone, including businesses that competed with the school's own book store.</p>
<p>The book store is still in business, and Harvard could avoid problems by making a similar decision.</p>