$568.70. During my first semester in community college, this was the number that hung over me. Almost a whopping $600. This was not for tuition; a grant paid the entire cost of my classes. This heart-stopping bill was for my textbooks.
Having just returned to school after a number of years of work, I was naive about everything. Like a fool, I walked into the college bookstore, handed over my schedule and let the store workers make a stack that would all but wipe out my financial aid for the semester. Sick with worry and counting the shifts I’d have to work to make ends meet, I resolved that there had to be a better way.
When the class list for the following semester became available, I went straight to work. I got my list of textbooks, and I set about ordering them from cheaper sources — renting them, borrowing them or pirating them. (There are legal and illegal dodges to the acquisition of textbooks; I suggest you stick to the legal ones.) It became crystal clear to me that this semester would be less expensive than the one before it. Two language textbooks, two lit textbooks and one math workbook later, I had only shelled out about $95.
Luckily, as an English major, most of what is required for my classes is old enough that the copyright has expired, so it’s available online for free. Sites like Luminarium, Project Gutenberg and Google Books have saved me literally thousands of dollars by providing for free what many textbook publishers are still trying to sell. Most well-known authors like Johnson, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Milton have societies dedicated to the publication and preservation of their work, so I’ve learned to use them. You can too. Many great universities — including UC Berkeley — have a plethora of resources, both online and in the library. Harvard maintains a brilliant interlinear and footnoted translation of Chaucer — all yours for zero dollars and a Wi-Fi connection. The same goes for the classics and a great deal of philosophy and rhetoric texts. Some majors (CSS, EECS, math, media studies) are significantly less friendly to this practice. Similarly, some professors are hostile about the use of electronics or the problems that may arise from the use of a different edition of the text.
Libraries can be an incredible utility in this endeavor. The university library may have the very book you need available for checkout, but get in there early to find out. You won’t be the only one searching. The public libraries in the Bay Area have a highly efficient system of interlibrary loan, which allows them to request materials for you from far and wide (sometimes for a very small fee, sometimes free). Show up with an ID and proof of your address, and a city or county librarian will make you a card and produce miracles for your benefit. Familiarize yourself with the online renewal procedure, and you can keep your text for weeks at time without having to go back. Learn the rules, and our free library system can be your secret superpower.
This way of life is not without its difficulties. One girl using a different edition stopped the lecture multiple times in one of my classes last semester to ask what chapter or what section we were reading from. Eventually, she got corrected sharply in front of all of us for wasting our time. Around the room, those of us using the online text bowed our silent heads, thinking there but for the Find command go I. You must commit yourself to doing the reading and being able to recall it with or without your laptop in front of you. If you use library copies of a text, it will cost you time and money to photocopy pages. If you buy an out-of-date edition, you must refer to the class standard version to assure yourself that numbered problems or paragraphs are the same. If assigned to read introductions or footnotes, you must make friends with someone enough to warrant a glance at their book or track it down in the library when you have time. You must be ready to Google search and ctrl+F whatever is being discussed. Attention must be paid — no professor will thank you for interrupting a lecture to ask for clarification on where the reading is found. My experience in dodging the cost of textbooks has shown that professors are sensitive and understanding about the costs of college. Most of them are acutely aware that we are paying far more than they did, and they appreciate what we have to do to make it through college.
Nonstandard texts are currently the refuge of the poor, and the poor must be sharp to survive. As an English major, it is possible to graduate having read nothing published in the 20th century. I can comfortably expect to find my course materials online from the Anglo-Saxon period through the turn of the last century, with very few exceptions. Poor college students may be the pioneers of this practice, but others will soon follow. The shift toward electronic textbooks and open course material placed online is already upon us. Until then, stay sharp and save your money. To the Internet!
Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students. Contact her at [email protected]