Sergio Cisneros
Lantern Staff
Are you really getting what you pay for?
At the Butler Community College Bookstore, located in the 1000 building on the El Dorado campus, they try their hardest to make sure that every student can answer yes to that question. It seems that paying an arm and leg for course material has been and seems like it will always be an expected part of higher education.
With tuition around the country steadily climbing, it becomes apparent that rising costs are also affecting every aspect of the college experience. Book costs have always been a common complaint thick in the air at any institution, leaving many students wondering if they actually need the upwards to $100 for a book if the instructor prefers to teach lessons in class without referring to it.
Freshman Chase Koehn spent around $1,300 so far this year on books alone.
“I think [the price] anywhere for college textbooks is ridiculous,” Koehn said. “I think books should be included with tuition.”
The rising costs of course material is a great concern to students everywhere. So the only reasonable thing to do was to ask who runs the show in terms of textbooks: the Bookstore.
Operations Manager Rita Sullivan was willing to help explain the rising costs of books.
“The bookstore is at the mercy of the publisher,” Sullivan said.
According to Sullivan, when it comes to any price negotiations, the faculty are the only who are able to negotiate with the publishers. The faculty do their best to find quality and cost effective books to ‘adopt,’ which is the term the school uses when they choose material to use in their course.
Many students also seem to think that the bookstore has such high prices because they need to make a profit to keep the store running. However, Sullivan explained that the bookstore, is in fact not, privately owned, and all profits that they do make goes directly back to Butler’s auxiliary fund.
“With the profits, we built the EduCare facility, renovated the student union, and provided maintenance and renovations when needed,” Sullivan said. “We even paid for the construction for the Andover campus student union.”
Sullivan also said the bookstore simply cannot sell the material they order for classes for less than they bought them. They do so in order to bring some money back to Butler after how much they spend on those bulk orders.
Due to generally high costs, some students are forced to look into third party vendors for buying course material.
Freshman Luis Heredia spent around $1,000 shopping for books online.
“They are expensive,” Heredia said. “It was most definitely cheaper to go to a different option.”
Sullivan also explained that the rising costs are also due to publishers having such big teams. This includes manufacturing, research and development, quality assurance, editors, authors, marketers, distributors and many more departments. There are many hands in the economic pie and all want a decent piece for their contribution.
The bookstore, along with Sullivan’s leadership and knowledge of the book buying process, try to keep the students at Butler well equipped for the school year with quality material for a fair price. They do their best to make sure that students are satisfied with their purchases that could be invaluable for the challenges ahead in their courses.
With students buying books, more revenue can be back to the school to ensure Butler is a wonderful place of higher learning for any student on campus.