It is that time of year again, we all know the signs, the days wane and the air gets nippy. Yes, fall, the time of year that majority of us all dread for one specific reason, the start of a new school year.

These feelings of reluctance are not necessarily due to the fact that summer is over but because students across the Cerritos College campus must purchase the required textbooks for their classes.

The campus bookstore, located between the Burnight Center Theater and the campus gym, is a convenient destination for students to purchase books immediately without traveling to another location or ordering a book online and hoping it arrives on time before the first test or quiz.

However, is the conveniency worth the price? Students across campus are looking toward other alternatives to purchase or rent their textbooks from.

Business administration major Jillianne Tapel said,”Books are easy to find but they are really expensive.”

Overpriced textbooks in the campus bookstore has become the general consensus amongst Cerritos College students.

Because of this, students have switched to reputable online outlets such as Amazon or Ebay in the quest for inexpensive textbooks.

Comparisons were made between the campus bookstore’s listed textbook prices to the prices listed on Amazon for the exact same textbook.

Amazon resulted in being the generally cheapest solution for purchasing textbooks.

Price differences on Amazon range from 10 percent to 70 percent for certain general education textbooks, the most notable comparison being an English 52 textbook that is listed in the campus bookstore for $101.00 while the same textbook is listed on Amazon at a price of $37.15.

Medical major Rachel Fisher stated, “I paid a little over $230 for my Intro[duction] to anatomy and physiology textbook.”

When the price of her textbook was compared to the listed price of the same textbook on Amazon, it was proved that the same textbook on Amazon was roughly 50 percent cheaper than the campus bookstore.

Overpriced textbooks are not the only discouraging aspect that seems to undermine the charm of the campus bookstore’s convenience.

Comparing renting text books from the campus bookstore to ordering from an online rental service such as www.chegg.com also showed the online book rental site had more advantages.

The online rental service gives students access to a digital copy of their book while awaiting for the arrival of the physical copy, a 21-day full refund return policy, and finally, the potential to save up to 10 percent more on the Chegg website in comparison to renting from the campus bookstore.

Why are textbooks so expensive in the campus bookstore if they can obviously be acquired at a cheaper price somewhere else?

This is the question that Cerritos college students ask each semester, however, if a student were to actually ask the bookstore manager or an employee that exact question he or she will have to wait a couple of days, while the employee consults Human Resources, before receiving an answer from the company that operates and supplies the campus bookstore, Follett Higher Education Group.

Despite the high prices, campus bookstore manager, Brianne Freeman states that textbook sales have increased this semester due to “more students taking advantage of the Price Match Program in which we match the price of the identical textbook found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Chegg…”