&#91LETTERS TO THE EDITOR&#93Textbooks not easy to purchase

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&#91LETTERS TO THE EDITOR&#93Textbooks not easy to purchase

Published: 13 Mar. 2003, 01:13

College students are struggling to obtain text- books for required courses. Many students have been forced to look for secondhand books or inherit them from seniors because a textbook often costs more than 30,000 won ($25).
The next step is to search for books on Internet bookstores, where students can get a decent discount. However, workers at online bookstores say that they cannot always stock textbooks.
"We’d like to sell them, but we can’t find those books,” an online bookstore worker said.
This gives an impression that there is some connection between universities and publishers, just as middle school and high school teachers once had commissions from publishing companies for selecting certain books. Books that I have purchased at a university bookstore did not always bear publishers’ stamps, which always aroused my suspicions.
College textbooks should be circulated in a transparent way, and making those books easily available to students should be a top priority.

by Internet reader ID: young00