Uconn Buy Textbooks [HOT]
Purchasing textbooks is a chore, and can be painful on the wallet. Now, an in-store textbook rental service at the UConn Co-op offers students an alternative to buying books that is both convenient and economical.
uconn buy textbooks
There is only ONE way to register for and access WebAssign. Once the semester officially begins, simply log into your HuskyCT account (lms.uconn.edu), navigate to the page for Math 1060Q, then follow the link on the left hand side for WebAssign Homework. When logging into WebAssign (through HuskyCT), do not use Internet Explorer or Safari. Use Firefox or Chrome.
At UConn, a committee of faculty, students, and administrative staff has secured a grant of nearly $100,000 from the Davis Educational Foundation to introduce open textbooks on campus. The University Libraries will lead the effort to survey faculty about the use of open textbooks, create online workshops for faculty development, and adapt an existing general chemistry textbook.
Open textbooks are comprehensive course-linked educational materials, either in the public domain or written under Creative Commons licenses, which allow for the use and reformatting of the content without obtaining permissions from their authors. Open textbooks are commonly accessed free of charge through a variety of digital formats that can be used on a wide range of devices or inexpensively purchased in print form.
The grant will help the UConn open textbook committee to raise awareness of the benefits of open textbooks, which were first used last year. The pilot resulted in the Student Welfare Committee of the University Senate approving a resolution supporting the OT initiative and encouraging faculty to explore the use of open textbooks at UConn. In its approval, the Senate committee noted that the effort to promote open textbooks was initiated by students in the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and UConn Public Interest Research Group (UConnPIRG).
It is estimated that UConn students could potentially save more than $1 million annually by using open textbooks. The College Board estimates that students spend an average of $1,200 per year on textbooks and materials, and that prices for textbooks have increased 82 percent between 2002 and 2012, three times the rate of inflation.
The Bookstore will run a full-service website that will include all course materials requested by faculty and enable students to order and reserve textbooks online. It will also continue to offer textbook buy-back periods, sell and service computer hardware, sell licensed UConn apparel and general merchandise, and accept Husky Bucks.
UConn PIRG has also had success in aiding with textbook affordability. One of their most notable accomplishments was helping pass a bill that allocated $5 million of the federal budget to the open education initiative. Annavarjula said the movement aims to create free online alternatives to high-cost textbooks. This change is estimated to save students across the nation upwards of $50 million.
As the fall semester is underway and students try to clear space on their bookshelves, University of Connecticut students recommend using online forums such as eBay or Facebook Marketplace to get the most money when selling unwanted textbooks. Meanwhile, the UConn Bookstore recommends trying to rent books from their company to get the best value.
In light of the findings by recent researchers, a mismatch seems to exist between the difficulty of textbooks, the repetition of curricular material in these texts, and the needs of our high ability learners. These students spend much of their time in school practicing skills and learning content they already know. All of these factors may be causing our most capable children to learn less and proceed haltingly in their development, thereby creating or encouraging their underachievement. Many of these bright students learn at an early age that if they do their best in school, they will be rewarded with endless more pages of the same kind of practice materials.
Replacement strategies consisted of three categories of activities for students: enrichment, acceleration, and other, which included activities such as peer tutoring, cooperative learning, correcting papers, and other teacher assistance tasks. Ninety-five percent of teachers used enrichment as a replacement strategy and 18% also used acceleration. Many more teachers indicated they would have elected to use acceleration more frequently, but were prevented from doing so because of district policies that prohibit students from working in textbooks beyond their present grade level. Although the majority of replacement strategies reflected student interests, needs, and preferences, replacement strategies often did not reflect the types of advanced content that would be appropriate for high ability students. This finding indicates that additional staff development is necessary, especially as it relates to appropriately challenging replacement strategies. This finding was confirmed through anecdotal records, which indicated that teachers would like more access to consultant assistance from enrichment or gifted education specialists, and more training and assistance in locating and using appropriate enrichment materials.
Dr. Edward Neth, a chemistry professor at UConn, edited an existing open access textbook and adapted it for his Chemistry 1124, 1125, and 1126 classes after students brought the problem of the high cost of textbooks to his attention.
Some other conditions, including satisfactory academic progress, apply to summer financial aid. Please see the UConn Office of Student Financial Aid Service's Summer Financial Aid page for full details. The Office of Student Financial Aid Services should be contacted directly with any questions about federal aid, loans or other available aid programs for summertime study at financialaid@uconn.edu or by phone at (860) 486-2819.
Cultivator bookstore, located at 301 East Main Street in Murfreesboro, N.C., will host its opening reception Friday. Owner Caroline Stephenson, who launched an IndieGoGo campaign earlier this summer to raise funds for rent and startup costs, will offer new books, used books, children's books, books by local and regional authors (including Frank Stephenson), textbooks, pottery and art by local artists (including James Messer). There will also be a children's play area, book signings, book clubs, open mic nights, poetry slams, a meeting space, wi-fi and fax services. On Facebook Sunday, Cultivator posted: "What an incredible day! Shelving progressing and it's really starting to look like a bookstore. Special thanks to Tony Jenkins who came by and helped us with a project. Patricia Clement who helped us with sorting/shelving. And Mrs. Trudy Gibson who donated 50 boxes of books to us with 30 more to come. And a Chowan football player who came and and was looking for children's books for his 14 month old son. 'You gotta start them out early,' he said. Like I said, what an incredible day."
Earlier this year, when the University of Connecticut chose to bring Barnes & Noble College to campus and sent the UConn Co-op, the 41-year-old member-owned, student governed independent bookstore packing, many people, including myself, were shocked and dismayed. Nationally, outside the academic arena, the cultural trend is towards supporting locally owned and independent businesses. Independent bookstores are on the rise. Farmers markets are wildly popular. Yet UConn, and other universities, especially public universities such as, most recently, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UC Irvine, are eschewing the local and opting for corporate relationships. Why is this happening?Most public universities have been facing budget cuts in recent years. States no longer fund their institutions of higher education as they once did. This has led to hefty tuition increases and the courting of out-of-state and international students for whom tuition is higher than in-state students. At UConn, the out-of-state tuition for an undergraduate is three times the tuition charged for in-state. Some 21% of the students in Storrs are from outside Connecticut.In addition to less state support, federal and other grants have decreased in recent years. These factors have led to cost-cutting measures, most significantly, relying proportionally more on adjuncts and teaching assistants and less on tenure or tenure track professors. A side effect of the national trend towards non-tenured faculty, which began in the mid-'70s in both private and public universities, is that power is concentrated within the administration.Budget constraints have also led to outsourcing and exclusive deals with large corporations to make up for the shortfalls. Many schools no longer operate their own dining services, but outsource student meals to international food service corporations such as Chartwells and Compass. Dorms, especially at public universities, are being outsourced. The University of California Irvine, Arizona State University, the University of Tennessee and others have student housing operated by American Campus Communities. EdR Collegiate Housing built the apartments in Storrs Center at UConn, including those above the UConn Co-op.Interestingly, the move to attract high-tuition out-of-state students and the competition for those students, together with the move to outsource student housing to large corporations bidding against each other, has led to increased (and expensive) amenities that were unheard of a few years ago. Exercise equipment, granite counters, high-speed Internet, flat screen televisions, yoga rooms and swimming pools have become standard.Large and many small and medium size campuses are either Coke campuses or Pepsi campuses. UConn is a Coke campus--no Pepsi products allowed. California and Arkansas are Pepsi schools. These exclusive contracts, usually negotiated for spans of 10 years, can bring millions of dollars to the institutions. They are, in effect, mini-monopolies on campus. Student choice is eliminated. Once the contract is negotiated, competition is eliminated.Similarly, large campuses, particularly those with strong athletic programs, enter into exclusive deals with one of the large athletic apparel manufacturers: Nike, Under Armour or Adidas. Arizona State is an Adidas school. Maryland is an Under Armour school. UConn is a Nike school. The apparel companies provide gear for all the varsity teams at no cost, enjoy advertising privileges at events, dominate sales or in some schools have the only products for sale, and often also give money. At UConn, Nike--at "no cost to UConn"--redesigned the school mascot into a fiercer looking Husky in hopes of building an audience for football. This meant increased sales for Nike, and license fees for UConn as the Co-op had to mark down items with the original Husky and bring in merchandise with the new dog.These deals have become increasingly lucrative as college athletics has become big business. Schools with robust football programs (not UConn, whose football program loses $20 million a year) can realize tens of millions of dollars from the deals their conferences make with the media in addition to the dollars from the apparel companies.The focus of college and university administrators has changed. An important part of their jobs has become negotiating with large corporations. Many college presidents and top administrators have become like CEOs themselves rather than scholarly leaders. Many have the paychecks and perks to match, necessitating bringing in even more money. At UConn, recent budget cuts forced layoffs across campus, most deeply at the library, while the number and salaries of administrators increased.Concurrently, the textbook business has been in turbulence, with e-books, rental books, organized student activism over prices, students sharing textbooks or skipping them altogether, an increased lack of concern about which edition one uses, and increased competition from Amazon. Many universities and certainly UConn have embraced e-books, with top administrators believing they will be the only format within a few years. Students have repeatedly demonstrated that they prefer paper or paper/digital combination editions. Administrators see e-books as a way to address student concerns about the perceived high price of textbooks and indeed, the electronic versions of textbooks are less expensive than the print. We should note, however, that digital textbooks are far more expensive than digital trade books. In addition, many schools, including UConn, are promising "open source" (free) textbooks in the future, though not owning the content, it is difficult to understand how they will do this. Textbook publishers benefit from e-books because, for the most part, students do not purchase them but purchase the right to access them for a semester. This eliminates used books, which have long been an important part of the mix in college bookstores as students like their lower prices. Publishers however, get no benefit from used books. And since e-coursebooks are time sensitive, if a student has to repeat a course, he or she must purchase the book again.Meanwhile, the two leading bookstore lease operators, Barnes & Noble College and Follett, have been under pressure themselves, with intensifying competition from Amazon. Amazon has moved into the used textbook business, entered into deals with universities, and is opening on-campus and near-campus staffed pick-up sites. Barnes & Noble and Follett have long approached university administrators with deals, but in recent years, they have ramped up their activity on this front and become more aggressive. They offer a percentage of sales in their bids and make very high projections of what will be paid directly to the university (often for "scholarships" though it is never mentioned whether these scholarships are in place of already existing scholarships funded by the university and so of no net benefit to students). Independent college stores have a variety of arrangements with their universities, all of them contributing mightily both monetarily and non-monetarily, though admittedly not as flashy as promising "Three million a year!"Add to all this, a waning respect for the humanities on many campuses, especially research universities. The humanities do not bring in the grants that the sciences do. They are not part of STEM. English departments are far less expensive to operate than many other departments; their faculty are generally paid less and they do not need labs or fancy equipment. However, neither do they bring in millions of dollars in grants. So we see these forces at work: the decreased financial support of public institutions from their states; the increase of out-of-state students which weakens ties to in- state families/taxpayers; the reliance on deals with large national and international corporations for operating funds and for operations; the subsequent corporatization of universities themselves; and the lease operators' push to expand. None of these trends results in lower costs for students. In fact, the opposite: across the nation tuition is up, room and board is up, textbook prices are up (many titles are more expensive at the lease stores than the independents), apparel prices are up (UConn's athletic department lobbied for B&N and objected to the Co-op's student friendly pricing for clothing!), and as we all know, student debt is up.It is in this climate that the University of North Carolina, despite widespread objections and protests, decided to turn to Barnes & Noble rather than continue to operate its century-old bookstore, the Bull's Head, that was noted for its strong trade department. And in this climate that the University of Connecticut decided, despite 14,000 online and print signatures supporting the Co-op, plus high-profile support from authors, community members and legislators, to replace the Co-op with Barnes & Noble. Similarly, the bookstore at UC Irvine had widespread and vocal support and a robust online petition, but was lost to Barnes & Noble.In this election, one of the more popular proposals, which at least gets the discussion out in the open, is to make college tuition free at state institutions for in-state residents with a household income under $125,000, using a combination of state and federal funds. This gives me hope because it focuses attention back on the core mission of our state universities: to provide high-caliber education for state residents at affordable prices. Our state governments and public universities have lost sight of this. And if they have forgotten their core missions, of course they do not value their independent bookstores. While the rest of the country embraces localism and treasures their independent bookstores, our large public universities are disregarding the huge cultural contributions an independent bookstore brings to college life. Corporatization is the new academic culture. I believe, and I know many faculty and students across the country agree, that education is too important to corporatize, and that includes the bookstore. 041b061a72