Share

A few days ago, the fall semester began. Freshman moved into their dorm rooms for the first time in awe and wonder of what their next four years might look like. The barren campus turned into a promenade of activity. Professors returned and classes began. Freshmen enter a college classroom for the first time, hear what they need to do make the professor happy for the semester, and find out that even after spending thousands on tuition, they have to spend more money on textbooks.

Most freshmen get suckered into paying above market value by walking into the campus bookstore and paying whatever they’re asked. Some of the upperclassmen who have been around a few semesters do something a bit wiser, ask for ISBN numbers for the books from professors, and purchase their textbooks online for a fraction of what the bookstore wants. Other students share books amongst themselves in order to spend a little bit less money on their books.

Although buying one’s textbooks online saves a ton of money, there’s an even better way to save money on your textbooks, just don’t buy them. In the majority of your classes, you will be able to get by just fine without your textbooks. Chances are there are resources online which will let you learn about whatever you need to just as well as the textbooks would enable you to. Most professors don’t even follow the textbooks. They teach off schedules they came up with decades ago, and probably don’t pay too much attention to what’s in the books because they think they already know what’s in it, and don’t need to reference it again.

If you’re in a class that occasionally has assignments out of the book, borrow your dorm-neighbors copy of the book and write down the questions for the assignment. It’s a lot cheaper than forking over $100 for a text-book.

There are of course some classes that are exceptions where you really do need the textbook. Math classes are a great example of this, they almost always follow the book directly. If it’s the case that the vast majority of your test questions are pulled directly out of the text-book and there’s no other reasonable way to get that information, or you’re in a class where the book is used to provide assignments on a regular basis, then you probably want to buy the book. You’ll still want to buy it as cheaply as you can online, or share it with a buddy if you can to save money. You’ll really only need your text-book in maybe one out of every five classes you take. In the majority of your classes, you’re just wasting money.