As spring semester draws to a close and students busy themselves with studying for exams and preparing travel arrangements, the university bookstore will brace for the end-of-term book buyback ritual. Thrifty students will compare prices at the book sale van that sits near the steps of Lauinger Library with those in the bookstore. Some students will sell their books online in an effort to recoup as much money as possible.

Come fall semester, the textbook racket will pick up where it left off in January. Publishers will print new editions – sixth, seventh, eighth and onward – that lack substantive changes. There will be new page numbers, new chapter titles and maybe even a new case study or sidebar that few will read. The bookstore will run out of used copies of many of the most expensive textbooks, forcing students to pay an arm and a leg for a new book or face the uncertainty of buying online.

It’s time for Georgetown administrators to get serious about reducing the burden of textbook costs. Too many students already struggle with insufficient financial aid and crushing loans to pay for one of the most expensive college educations in the United States – a few hundred dollars per semester can make a difference. Some students can hardly afford to buy used books at the beginning of the semester; no one should be forced to pay even more for new editions that rarely have essential new features.

any textbook publishers have created a business model by which they profit off of students more and more each semester. They slowly phase out old editions to make way for new ones that somehow provide transformative updates to old, inferior versions. Some send professors new textbooks free of charge to encourage them to force students to buy them.

A new edition every five or 10 years is probably sufficient to keep up with new developments in the field, but many publishers come out with new editions practically every year, not every decade. It’s probably safe to say that the basic principles of accounting, psychology and biology have not changed meaningfully in the past year. There is no need for a new textbook to cover the same core principles.

The best-known cheaper alternative for buying books on campus was probably The Corp’s Book Co-Op; the service, however, was closed after losing money in successive years.

There is a better way: Some textbooks could come with courses. Professors could choose and distribute their preferred books to students at the beginning of each semester. Students would return the books at the end of the semester so that future students could use the same text. Each course would have to charge book fees, but ultimately students would pay far less than they do under the current system. This system would be most worthwhile if used for expensive textbooks – not necessarily inexpensive paperbacks.

This policy would save students hundreds of dollars if it were implemented. Each student would be on the same page and free of the stress and financial burden of buying a series of expensive textbooks.

The system isn’t perfect, but it is practical. If a student lost or damaged a book, that student would pay for a replacement. To ensure that enough copies of the same edition are available, academic departments would need to maintain reserves. As books age, courses would have to update their libraries. Non-reusable workbooks (ubiquitous in language classes) would have to be purchased new every year.

Overhauling our book system would be a logistical challenge for the university, but it would pay dividends for students. At the very least, the university should experiment with this system in classes taught by a few forward-thinking professors. If it works, the university should consider adopting this system for more courses on a case-by-case basis. It would save students time, money and energy – three things students desperately need more of this time of year.

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