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YSU program offers cheaper textbooks
YOUNGSTOWN
Youngstown State University’s Student Government Association leaders are gearing up to battle expensive book prices for their fellow students.
Tyler Miller-Gordon and Gabriella Gessler, SGA president and vice president, respectively, said they are working to help students spend less when it comes to buying textbooks for required general education classes.
This project includes educating students about lesser-known options for purchasing textbooks.
“The current problem we are facing is students not knowing what their resources are or the access they have,” Gessler said.
Some of these resources include using Maag Library, Barnes and Noble College Resources, Amazon, EBay, Chegg.com, PDF resources, open-source texts and more.
Gessler and Miller-Gordon have been advocates of sharing their knowledge about these options on social media, by word of mouth, with parents and students who attend SOAR – Student Orientation, Advisement and Registration – and even encouraging staff to help via syllabi, course websites or word of mouth.
Both students agree: They want to get the word out.
“I want to touch as many students’ [lives] as possible,” Gessler said.
Gessler and Miller-Gordon also are using a reward system to encourage other students to help the cause.
At the end of each semester Gessler and Miller-Gordon are coordinating donation drives for students who are willing to donate their general education books in return for a voucher for four game tickets to a YSU athletic event.
Miller-Gordon said the voucher is meant to equate what a buy-back price would be for the textbooks.
The books will be evaluated and processed into Maag Library’s collection, enabling free access to students. Students’ access will have to be in compliance with library policy, with a maximum checkout of three hours. If there is no one else waiting for the book, students may continue checking out the text every three hours.
A small-scale goal Miller-Gordon wants is for the initiative to continue beyond his years at YSU. Large scale, however, he would like help battle a bigger crisis many members of senior leadership at various universities across the nation are facing: student debt.
“Textbook affordability definitely plays into student debt, and if we can help just one aspect, we are impacting the bigger problem,” he said.
Miller-Gordon said he even hopes through making textbook access more affordable and realistic to low-income students he hopes to put pressure on textbook-publishing companies to lower the costs of their expensive material.
Gessler said textbook affordability can even be a problem affecting university retention rates.
“We don’t want students to have to choose between buying gas to get to school or purchasing a textbook to pass a test or a course,” she said.
For information on resources available to YSU students regarding textbook affordability, visit http://sga.ysu.edu/initiatives/tba/.