There is perhaps nothing more stressful, especially for first time students, than getting your textbooks at the beginning of the semester.
These past few semesters on the UTM campus have been especially hard on students and teachers.
Not only do refund checks come in later than in previous years, which makes it harder for students to secure the textbooks they need, but professors are also anxious to hit the ground running due to their limited time allotted for covering vast amounts of materials.
This confluence of factors has led to a lot of dismay about securing textbooks every year. While much of the difficulty is driven by students, frankly, not being serious enough about getting their textbooks on time, there are other factors at play.
Some have complained that the process for procuring a book loan to allow them to purchase books when they need them is too laborious, sometimes requiring multiple trips to the Hall-Moody Administration Building.
This semester, however, many of the teachers and students I talked to across campus expressed frustration not merely for not being able to afford books, but also in not being able to procure them.
Alyssa Rusciano, a junior English major, and Hailey Slaughter, a senior English major, both related how when they went to purchase their textbooks the week before classes began, they found the shelf where it should have been barren.
“There was a sign for it there… and when I went up and asked them about it, ‘Oh, we need to talk to [the professor] about that, because he may need to order a different version,'” Rusciano said.
Apparently they never did talk to Rusciano’s instructor, because on the first day of class she was one of the students that informed him of the shortage.
Rusciano said this was particularly frustrating because her particular scholarship required her to purchase her books through the bookstore.
The instructor for this particular class, Dr. Chris Hill, said that the students’ inability to procure the required text has affected the way he teaches.
“It’s hard for them to get the reading done without the text. I’ve been putting the readings on Canvas which is a solution, but not a great one,” Hill said.
“In English classes in particular, there’s not a lot for us to do [without a text]. There’s no way to assure they do the reading that they’re assigned, but one way to make sure they don’t is that they don’t have access to the text.”
I suspected, however, there was much more to the story than merely a negligent bookstore staff.
Kelly Wheeler, the UTM bookstore’s assistant manager, gave me some insight into how the bookstore actually goes about ordering the textbooks they need and where problems can arise.
First, she explained, professors choose the books they need for their classes through an online portal. The trickier bit is knowing how many books to order.
“We look at sales from the last couple of years, and we look to see how many purchased last year. If there were 50 students last year, did only 30 buy? Did all 50 buy?”
Generally, they order roughly as many books as there will be students in a particular class, minus a few. This doesn’t always work out, however, as she went on to explain.
“If there’s a sudden spike at the end, for example when everyone drops and adds [classes], we may be lagging on those books, because it is last minute and we have to order more.”
The biggest problem seems to be, according to Wheeler, supplier issues.
She gave the example of an entire shipment of nursing textbooks that were lost by the supplier, which not only affected the UTM store, but also many of the stores in the area. Something of this magnitude happens about once a semester, Wheeler said.
She also said the longer a student waits to order or attempt to order a book, the harder they are to procure. By several weeks into the semester, suppliers are out of books and have to print more and other bookstores are unsure how many they need to keep in stock and how many they can safely loan out to the stores that need them.
Needless to say, the fact that many students’ refund checks are only coming in this week, a month after classes start, doesn’t bode well for procuring textbooks in a timely manner.
She stressed the importance of getting your books early. It’s not feasible for the bookstore to stock a book for every student in a class, given that some students will almost certainly order their copy from a different retailer and some of the textbooks are not returnable, so if you absolutely must buy from the bookstore, it is best to do so as early as possible.
The book crunch seems to be inevitable.
Refunds are coming in later and professors cannot and should not be willing to put up with students not having the required text a month into classes, but at the same time the bookstore does not have the magical capability to procure books from thin air, and judging from my own personal interactions with the UTM bookstore, they are genuinely trying to get the books to the people who need them.
There isn’t one person or group to blame for this state of affairs, merely a convergence of systemic issues around book buying that make things difficult for literally everyone involved.
If you want my advice, buy your textbooks as early as you can, and take the necessary steps weeks, even months, in advance to make sure you can do so whether that’s doing some summer work, applying for a book loan or additional scholarships.
The current system for getting your books may be dysfunctional at times; sometimes problems will arise that will be legitimately beyond your control and your professors will understand that, but take what steps you can to ensure that you are always doing everything you can to fulfill your obligation to be prepared to learn.
Pacer Photo/Brandon Napier
