Staff Editorial: Make book lists available earlier

In theory, Penn students register for courses, find out what books they need and purchase them all through the Penn Bookstore. However, in practice it simply does not work this way, for several reasons. As such, the University must acknowledge that many students obtain their textbooks through a variety of other sources, and because of this, Penn should make a list of required texts available well before the start of the next semester.

The University should create a deadline, somewhere between when students first register for courses and the end of the semester, by which time professors must submit a list of books that students must buy for each course. This list should then show up on Penn InTouch, on the same page as our schedules. This is not that radical a request; other universities currently do it this way.

While this may sound logistically challenging, in essence the University already does a version of this. Through Campus Express, students can pre-order all the books for their courses and even have them delivered to their room. That, of course, assumes that the books for all students' classes will be ordered through the Penn Bookstore, and that is an entirely irrational assumption. But in any event, it means that professors generally have a good idea of the books they will use for a course well in advance of the first day of classes.

Posting a list of required texts in this manner would accomplish several things. First of all, students would be able to judge a course's workload and the nature of the reading material that the course would cover well in advance. It would also allow students to buy used versions of books from some of their friends currently in the courses they wish to take.

The University needs to acknowledge that, as convenient as it may be for administrative purposes, students simply do not buy all their books at the Penn Bookstore. A wealth of alternative sources exist for a variety of reasons. First of all, many students are very comfortable ordering books through the Internet, and can often find better deals this way. Many professors, especially in the humanities, elect to help local retail by ordering their books through the Penn Book Center or A House Of Our Own. Additionally, many students are constrained by the cost of buying books at the sticker price, especially in science and business courses. While some professors try to alleviate this by posting readings on Blackboard, making a list of required books available early would go a long way toward easing the financial burdens of textbooks.

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