Student Stories!
The part of this whole experience that we looked forward to the most was hearing from students. While few people stayed to talk to us for an extended period of time at our table, we were surprised by the time students took to write in some of their negative experiences with the price of textbooks. Data is great and gives you the statistics you need to back your goals, but personal experiences are compelling and motivating. Here are some of our favorites responses when asked “Has the cost of course materials negatively affected your university experience?”:
“I’m not happy about it. That’s like almost 3 weeks of groceries but it’s not like I’m unable to buy groceries I just think with how high tuition is the university should better help the average student.”
“Had to restructure budget.”
“I was a bit disappointed when I had to pay for books after paying ~$45k to attend.”
“I don’t want to take out more loans, put debt on my parents or myself. i also don’t have a lot of time to work so it’s just not reasonable to be able to cover those expenses.”
“Paid more attention to fees when picking classes, having different materials compared to classmates, having to pick different or lower quality materials than what I would have wanted for a project.”
“Added to my financial stress and was pretty frustrating cause I don’t use my textbook much in some of my classes.”
“I’ve had to use online free PDFs of older editions because I couldn’t afford the new ones, and it messes up my page numbers and citations.”
“I feel like I buy books then don’t really use them.”
