By Mary Whitfill, editor-in-chief
After years of watching students cringe when paying full price for textbooks at the Northeastern bookstore, the Student Government Association (SGA) is releasing an online platform to save students the sticker shock associated with purchasing texts for a full course load.
The website, neu.texts.com, allows buyers to compare prices, list books for sale at competitive rates and meet up with other students at NU to buy and sell textbooks. Run by N.Y. start-up texts.com, the site aims to find a solution to a problem faced by college students across the nation.
“Students are using textbooks in the fall, then selling them to the bookstore at pennies on the dollar,” Peter Frank, texts.com co-founder, said. “The bookstores hold onto them for a month or so over winter break, then sell them at a dramatic markup. It’s just a very inefficient system. Textbook exchange, where students are actively on the platform and using it, ensures that not only will the buyer pay less for that book than they would have otherwise, but the seller is actually getting a good price as well.”
SGA began working with Frank at the beginning of the summer, hoping to have the platform accessible to students by the start of the spring 2015 semester. Senior economics major and SGA president Noah Carville said that the association had been contemplating how to address the price of textbooks for a while.
“Textbooks are too expensive. In May we were contacted by these guys; at that point I had won the election, and we started saying this was something we wanted to work on,” Carville said. “I think we formally proposed it to the administration in July and we’ve been working with them since.”
While Northeastern is not formally associated with the platform, the Office of Student Affairs cleared the project, and the site is now available for use by NU students.
In the last 16 years, the average price of a college textbook has increased more 150 percent, according to the American Enterprise Institute, a statistic Carville thinks NU students should not have to bear the brunt of.
“I paid $235 dollars for one business book, and that is unacceptable to me,” he said.
Carville points to an assurance of product, along with helping fellow students, to explain why this new platform is the best option for NU undergraduates.
“On the one hand you can try to buy a text on Amazon and you can get that discount, then it shows up ripped in half, or you don’t get it in time for classes to start because it has a 10-day shipping delay,” Carville said. “The other thing is, if I’m paying that much money I would rather pay it to another student because that will help them buy textbooks. It is making it affordable in two different ways.”
This project falls under the Academic Affairs Committee of SGA. Eric Tyler, committee chair, said this website represents a new way student government is helping students find more affordable options.
“We have consistently tried to find ways to reduce the prices of textbooks: using e-copies, buying used, a whole variety of different things,” Tyler, junior information science and business administration major, said. “But we haven’t really had anything like this where it is finding a different source and making it more available to students. In the past it has been more on the professor to provide a cheaper text instead of us saying ‘okay, they chose your textbook, now what can we do to find a cheaper option.’”
Tyler hails the site as a more official way to handle student-to-student textbook sales, as opposed to connecting through other online platforms. Frank echoes this sentiment and adds that the website benefits users even if a student-to-student transaction isn’t completed.
“The unique thing about our textbook exchange versus a Facebook group or more rudimentary textbook exchange is that in addition to all the student listings, we also provide price comparison links,” Peter said. “If you come to our site and there are no student listings, you will see that there are no student listings but that we can still find you this book as cheap as possible.”
Carville boasts the website’s other services as well.
“As an informational tool, even if you never buy a book from another student, it is the best aggregate of every other price option out there that I’ve ever seen,” Carville said. “Maybe you aren’t going to buy from another student, but you’ll see that Amazon is cheaper than Chegg is cheaper than Valore.”
The National Association of College Stores reported in 2012 that students estimate spending $655 annually on textbooks, but the College Board almost doubles that approximation, reporting that the average student spends $1,200 on textbooks.
“My first semester I spent an obscene amount of money, but after that I kind of wised up to the game,” sophomore biochemistry major Marc Tawfik said.
Tawfik thinks using resources like this will allow students to avoid high overhead costs.
“I think [the platform] is really smart, especially for students who are younger,” he said. “I know that when I was a freshman I bought textbooks for way more than I should from older students who knew I was a freshman and didn’t know how much to pay for textbooks. I think that would be very helpful because it at least provides the information for you to know what a fair price is for your textbook. I like that initiative.”
Freshman human services major Jordan Kellogg said she doesn’t buy new textbooks; she always looks to purchase from third party retailers.
“I usually buy used textbooks, I don’t rent them, so I usually buy them on Amazon and then look to sell them back,” she said. “The prices usually aren’t that bad but they can be. I would use [neu.texts.com] because I am always open to cheaper textbooks.”
Kellogg and Tawfik are the kind of students Frank hopes his company can help on a semester-to-semester basis.
“I am a 2012 graduate, as is my business partner and co-founder [Ben Halpern], so we are not that distantly removed from college,” Frank said. “Very sincerely, we are hoping to help students which is why there is no fee, no commissions, students never have to pay us anything. We want to help students and we want to help student governments.”
Photo by Scotty Schenck
