Read the Affording textbooks sample argument essay and explain 1 thing you thought was done well and 1 thing you thought it could have done better.
Affording Textbooks
Growing up, you always hear from older people around you, especially parents, aunts, uncles, saying, “Stay in school, do good in school, that way you can go to college and get a good job!” Many of us when its time to go to college realize how expensive it is! From paying college itself, tuition, fees, and on top of that paying for textbooks. Paying for textbooks can be stressful and their has to be a better way to afford them.
In the United States, we are lucky to receive free education up until the 12th grade. There are laws that require a child to stay in school up until the age of sixteen, after that if the child doesn’t want to go anymore they have the choice to drop out and obtain a GED if they would like.
Education is very important, it is thought that, “A more educated population means more knowledge, more skills, more people who can do more to make things better for all of us. This is a broader communal perspective, in that it sees education as benefiting the larger community” (The Student Loan Mess.) When education is told to people that it will help them better themselves in terms of money, people strive for it, and want to strive for higher level education. Which is why many people want to go to college, but once they are there, college cost starts to build up, and a cost of textbooks shouldn’t have to be another worry for students attending it.
Financial aid is offered which is good, and it can help students to attend college. Many people who attend community college will go for free and wont have to pay out of pocket for college, but they will have to make the financial grant, “stretch” and make it work, but people who attend universities, and are able to qualify for financial aid, know that it will not be enough, and will most likely end up having to take a loan out, in order to pay for college. According to Student Loan Hero, it states, “ There is $1.48 trillion in total U.S student debt loan among 43 million American borrowers.” The amount of student debt is ridiculous, and students who make the effort to attend college should at least have a better way to not have another big expense of textbooks.
Being new to college, you don’t have a clue, and your professors will most likely require you to purchase a textbooks for the course. Many freshmen in college rush to buy the book because they think it will be necessary for the course. The average cost of a textbook can be up to $300.
(National Association of College Stores.) So, if the average cost of a textbook is 300, if you’re a full- time student, you multiply that by 5, lets say, as a college student you are spending about $1,500 on textbooks. How does this amount of money on textbooks make sense to afford? Especially as college students that are undergrad. Most of these college students are broke! The worst part about purchasing a textbook for a course has to be that the semester ends and you didn’t even use it! It has happen to many new incoming college students, because they don’t know. Further along the college life, students start to learn to find better resources to obtain textbooks for cheaper, online, used, and college students tend to resell their books in order to obtain money for it, to buy books again for their upcoming classes the next semester.
It is said, “College textbook prices have increased faster than tuition, health care costs and housing prices, all of which have risen faster than inflation. College textbook prices are 812 percent higher than they were a little more than three decades ago, the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, reports. Textbook costs have well outpaced the 559 percent increase in tuition and fees over roughly the same period.” (Huffington Post.) The prices of textbooks just keeps increasing as the years go by, if they are expensive now, imagine ten years from now?
The proportion of new American high school graduates who go on to college now appears to be declining. Last October, just 65.9 percent of people who had graduated from high school the previous spring had enrolled in college, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this week. That was down from 66.2 percent the previous year and was the lowest figure in a decade. The high point came in 2009, when 70.1 percent of new graduates had gone on to college. (New York Times). As statistics show, the amount of people who attend college seems to be declining. It doesn’t seem fair, for the people who are pursuing a career to fill them up with student debts. Minimizing textbooks costs seems fair to do, since not everyone attends college. Why make it hard for students who want a career.
It doesn’t make sense as to how public schools, which I have attended, I have never had to pay for a textbook. The public school system makes it possible to give students a free education, supply them with textbooks, on the other hand, students attending college or the university pay for this education, and cant even get supplied with a textbook for the course. It seems bizarre to have to pay for a course, and on top of that you have to pay for the textbook too! Colleges make it a struggle for students, because students have to worry about doing their work, passing the course, staying on track, and students also work jobs and have to stress about the money situation. Which leads to many students dropping out eventually, and some of it comes down to students not able to afford college. The way college is set up, it seems like they almost make it to be an impossible task to complete with the cost of college.
Surveys of students who were interviewed about college issues, most of their issues, was covering the textbook cost. One said, “I’d already picked up work-study job shifts, and any odd jobs I could find, but that alone wasn’t enough to pay the roughly $500 to $1,000 textbook expense each academic quarter (Daily Dot). The book stores at colleges have this trick of forcing students to have to buy a new expensive book because their professors require them to buy have an access code, and this access code is good for one use only. This system is corrupt. Students cant even try to save money by using a used textbook, because if they buy just the access code by itself, its about $100, or even more, so it makes students just buy and spend money.
A better way to afford textbooks has to come into plan.
My idea to afford textbooks, should be since technology is so advanced nowadays, colleges should design a software, or a website, where students have the option to pay for their textbooks for one price, lets say for $115, this would be the price you’d pay, you would have access to all your textbooks for all the classes that you have, and the software that you are paying for, you wouldn’t have to pay for it every semester, it would just be a one time payment. The only downside to this would be that you would only be able to access the textbooks online, unless you want to still purchase the hard copy version of the textbook you can always do it.
But as a student, I don’t think it will really matter, if you can access it online, it would be great, you would have access to it at any time and you would avoid the work of carrying the textbooks around. Also, the other part of my plan is to eliminate access codes for websites, in order to do work for the course. Having to require a student to buy an access code, is excessive. The software that should be created, should let students be able to access and have the same program like McGraw Hill Connect, this way using access codes can be eliminated. Creating this software will be good for the environment also, we waste so much paper on textbooks, and having this software can help reduce the amount of paper being used. We have the chance to preserve trees, if we can get this plan in action.
Putting this plan in action will help students take a weight off their shoulders, by making the prices of textbooks comfortable and easier to afford. Students will be able to alleviate stress by not having to pick up suckish jobs in order to able to afford the extra $1000 cost each semester for textbooks. Students will be able to put more time in their studies if they are able to have one less worry on their plate. Colleges wont lose money, with this plan, they will still make a profit off students, of course college book stores will be making less money, but they aren’t completely losing all of their profit. Colleges are maintained by what students pay for their tuition, developing an online software for students to access their textbooks wouldn’t hurt the colleges profit.
Works Cited
Best, Joel, and Eric Best. The Student Loan Mess : How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. University of California Press, 2014.
Hill, Phil, et al. “How Much Do College Students Actually Pay For Textbooks?” e-Literate, 2 Nov. 2016, mfeldstein.com/how-much-do-college-students-actually-pay-for-textbooks/.
“U.S. Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2018.” Student Loan Hero, Student Loan Hero, studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/.
Kingkade, Tyler. “CHART: The INSANE Growth In College Textbook Prices.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Dec. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/college-textbook-prices-increase_n_2409153.html.
Clifton, Derrick. “Why College Textbooks Should Be Free.” The Daily Dot, 11 Dec. 2015, www.dailydot.com/via/college-open-textbooks-free-affordability/.
Norris, Floyd. “Fewer U.S. Graduates Opt for College After High School.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/business/fewer-us-high-school-graduates-opt-for-college.html.
