By Kohar Bayizian
I was on the Queens College bookstore line the other day. My arms were so piled high with books that it was hard to see ahead of me and when I managed to reach the cash register, I was relieved.
Until I saw the first price come up on the screen.
Those of you who know what I mean, raise your hands. Actually, maybe you should raise both of them, because it does feel like being robbed.
What’s in these textbooks, anyway, that makes them cost about as much as taking a full-credit course? My Spanish book cost — maybe you should sit down — $127. But the good news is that I can use it for two semesters. Yeah, that really makes me feel better.
And, of course, it’s not just Queens College in the great borough of Queens; it’s all over the place and at every college. All my friends are complaining about the price of their class books.
Why can’t colleges give books to their students and take them back at the end of the year? Everybody knows a textbook loses more value after it’s sold than a car after it leaves the showroom. I sold back my books from last semester and I didn’t even get a quarter of what I originally paid for them. And considering how rarely I opened them, I should have gotten full price.
For the money you’re getting back, you might as well use them for a doorstop (the ones that weigh more than 50 pounds) or as a paperweight (under 50).
My father has had his engineering textbooks under his bed for 20 years just in case, according to him, they come in handy. Yeah, right. With all the new editions that come out every other year complete with some new CD ROM or workbook or just a few lines added here and there — and, of course, close to double the price — they’re going to be pretty much obsolete real fast.
And then there’s the book a teacher wrote that was put on the required reading list, but we didn’t even use it.
Well, if Mayor Michael Bloomberg is reading this, and I know he reads this newspaper regularly, and isn’t too busy banning exiled smokers from the street, maybe he can do something about the problem.
