NEW YORK—In addition to paying a 15 percent increase in tuition in 2009, students at the City University of New York (CUNY) spend nearly 20 percent of their college expenses on textbooks, stated Council Member Eric Gioia at a press conference on Sunday.
According to Gioia’s latest study, freshmen entering the fall semester at the 10 CUNY schools are encountering “extraordinarily high textbook costs”—an average of $536, said Gioia outside CUNY Hunter College’s bookstore.
“Especially in difficult economic times, no students, no hardworking New Yorkers should have to make the choice between a working night shift and buying their college textbooks,” said Gioia, chairman of the Council Committee on Oversight and Investigations.
He offered a personal example. When he was attending New York University, he had to skip some classes to work as a janitor; otherwise he would not have been able to pay for his college textbooks.
He said that currently, CUNY students have to purchase new textbooks all the time. Sometimes, even after changes as minor as reorganizing a text book’s chapters, a new edition for a particular textbook will be required. Therefore, some college students have a hard time selling their textbooks to new users after a semester, while others cannot afford the books to start with.
“We have a lot of students going to their first few weeks of school … without the textbooks required for class simply because they cannot afford it,” said Gioia.
Gioia called on the publishers to start creating fewer editions for the textbooks, as well as proposing a college textbook rental program, where college students would rent the textbooks for one semester at reduced cost and return them to the school afterward.
He said that the extra costs that CUNY would have to shoulder in building the rental program can be taken from the $10 million that was set aside in a federal grant for textbook rental programs in an act that was passed last year in Congress.
“I think this whole rental thing will be a very good idea. It’ll allow me to keep a lot more money in my pocket,” said Adecka Gordon, a freshman going to CUNY York College.
As Gordon made his purchase early, he was able to buy used textbooks at $487 for his five courses. He said that the number would have been much higher if he had purchased new books.
Gioia said that he sent a letter to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and contacted a few professors about the idea.
“[The professors] said that this is exactly what we need to be doing, because the professors see students in their classrooms without their textbooks,” said Gioia.
