The Carleton University bookstore recently announced that it will be price matching the lowest advertised price on textbooks for students. The announcement states that the goal of this price matching initiative is to keep costs as low as possible for students, while providing all course material that is required for students on campus.
Textbooks are expensive for students. On top of tuition, students are expected to spend anywhere near $800 to $1,000 every year on textbooks, according to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.
Although price matching is a good step forward for the Carleton bookstore toward making textbooks more affordable for students, there is more that needs to be done.
The Carleton bookstore is owned by Follett Higher Education, a company that operates numerous bookstores around North American universities. This means the Carleton bookstore is not unique to Carleton.
Price matching will bring the prices down, but new textbooks are still relatively more expensive than used ones. Moreover, there are exceptions on books that are price matched, according to Carleton’s announcement, so there is no guarantee the price will always be lower.
Carleton students need more cost-reducing initiatives that are catered to them. The bookstore should explore options such as ebooks and lower rental prices, as well as give a larger percentage of the price of used books back to students who want to consign them. They should be thinking about their local competition when pricing books, not national.
If the bookstore wants to provide the best value for Carleton students, they should consider more options than price matching. Textbooks should help students with their classes, not hinder their bank accounts.
