To the Editor:
Vanderbilt can and must do more to promote green and cost-cutting policies in its bookstore. The status quo is inefficient, the current practice is not environmentally sound, and the money being wasted could be much better spent elsewhere.
As The Hustler revealed last year, the reality of the situation is that textbook prices have quadrupled the rate of inflation over the past ten years. Students spend enough on books to make EFollet, the Vandy bookstore managing company, #113 of the Fortune 500 companies. More surprising is that EFollet has done this without guaranteeing sufficient quantities or arrival dates. To most students, textbooks hold meaning only in helping acquire a grade; they have no sustained or intrinsic value. So in times like these, why not save money, and even profit off of that quality?
Vanderbilt can begin by offering students the option of buying digital texts, as schools like Framingham and Grinnell have done for the better part of the decade. This eliminates the need to ship and print, which composes over half of the 64% of books’ costs attributed to publishing. As it stands, the typical student uses a little more than one tree in textbooks every year. Allowing students to buy the rights to digital text would enable them to curb their paper consumption while saving money.
Still, more can be done. Vanderbilt can then guarantee buybacks of those hard-copy books that students will still buy, and sell them to Chegg.com, “the Netflix of textbooks.” Somewhere in the 4,000 other American universities, students need the texts we’re using. And Vanderbilt could actually increase profits by buying every textbook back from students for at least 10% of the cover price before selling them to Chegg for their guaranteed 15% minimum purchase. Chegg rents the books over and over again for at least 20% of the price of the book, and plants a tree with every rental it processes; everyone can truly be happy.
Vandy students deserve better. So does the University. And so does the environment. And in reality, all of these interests can and ought be satisfied. I sincerely hope that you recognize the opportunity before us to leave this school a better place than it was when we entered it, and look forward to seeing it happen.
Joshua Morgan Sirchio
2010
