College Textbook Prices

I'm decided to rant about money and college textbooks, a wonderful thing if we are a returning student after being out of college for over 14 years. Where do these college bookstores get so money hungry to charge over $100 for a book you can order from Amazon/Borders online for under $75, and can order it from a brick and morter store (like Border, Barnes & Noble, and etc..) for $85. Here starts my story on buying one book for one class.

I decided to got back to college to upgrade my knowledge on a few things. I'm never going to get my batcholer degree, since I have been a college flunkie, but I found something a few weeks ago on the University of Maryland, University College site, that made me become a college student again. Certificate classes. Need only 14 to 21 credits to get a piece of paper stating I completed the required course work for the certificate. Great this is right up my alley, take the core classes and none of the other crap. So I'm going to start working towards my certificate in Information Management. The first class I decided to take was CMST 306, Intro to Visual Basic Programming .NET, I worked in access a few time, and I could use this class to start working in SQL. Now come the book for the class, and the college book store that wants to rape students.

The college bookstore in question is Maryland Bookstore (MBS). The MBS services all University of Maryland campuses, and they were going to charge me $110 for a Intro to Visual Basic .Net 2005, with CD, and 180 day trail. I thought that to be outragous for a book I can get at any book store. Well it turns out that normal bookstores only carry it special order now, since the book has been out over a year. So, I called the local Borders Store to special order it, and it would take 5 to 7 days to get it, so forget that, class starts in about a week. Then, I went to Amazon/Borders online, and found the book for $74.09 direct from them, and then I saw the prices from the used book stores for the same book, on Amazon, for about $100 on average used. Talk about a great deal, and sticking it to the place the place that makes up bend over for a book.