Throngs of students on the Auraria campus signed a petition today calling for cheaper textbooks and accountability by book publishers and university faculty that they hope will lessen their financial burden.
The petitions, to be sent to the Colorado legislature, asks legislators to take action this coming session.
“In many ways it — buying books — is like getting a root canal,” said Chris Dezember, 39, a theater major at Metropolitan State College. “I spend $500 to $600 a semester on books. It gets costly.”
College textbooks are a $6.2 billion industry, according to the National Association of Stores. The College Board estimates that students spent about $940 on books and supplies in the 2006-07 school year, a 30 percent jump in the past five years.
“We’ve looked at the available research and at what students in other states have done,” said Andrew Bateman, Student Assembly vice president at Metro, “and we’ve identified a set of policies to promote on campus and in the state legislature to reduce the price of textbooks for students.”
Bateman said that a number of studies over the past few years by student-advocacy and governmental organizations have documented the problem of high textbook prices.
Dozens of students from Metro, the University of Colorado at Denver and Community College of Denver streamed toward Bateman and several associates to sign petitions and write often lengthy summaries of the financial problems they encounter when paying for their textbooks.
Bateman had set up petition-signing tables outside the Tivoli Student Union building.
Seamus Moore, 21, a fourth-year UCD student majoring in sound engineering, said he had already spent $460 on books this semester.
“It’s very much a burden,” he said. “I average $300 to $350 a semester.”
Moore, who also works, said he couldn’t afford one book he needed until he got his next paycheck at Best Buy, where he is a sales associate.
He was able to buy the book only a few days before his mid-semester exam.
“As a direct result,” Moore said, “I flunked the test. I had the weekend to study for it.”
Maggie Campbell, 25, a psychology major at Metro who also works full time at Echter’s Garden Center, said that psychology majors pay a lot more money for their textbooks than some other majors.
“Psychology books are the most expensive,” she said. “When you have three classes and one book alone costs $120 book buying is absolutely a pain.”
“I’ve spent way too much on books,” Campbell added. “They give you the opportunity to sell the books for $20 at the end of the semester. It’s not worth it. I keep them all.”
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
