As ISU enters the midpoint of the semester, students question if required reading is actually required.
Midterms are approaching and some students have found that their textbooks do not seem as necessary as they thought.
Some students say they find it more cost efficient to forgo some books entirely due to high prices and a perceived limited use of some books.
Student Owen O’Shea share what many students experience with book buying, “Some teachers say buy the book, and it’s their book, and then you never read or touch it; but some teachers say buy the book, and it’s the most helpful thing you can ever do in the classroom, so it’s really base to base where the teachers base their tests off of.”
Students can find their textbooks to rent or borrow from the campus library to prepare for midterms when book prices are too high.
Professor Scott Jordan shares how some professors structure their curriculum in a way that does not require no books, “I’m not teaching an undergraduate course, like perception or cognition, where it would be traditional to have a textbook. Some people organize their course around having midterm exams. I don’t, I guess I do, in my graduate course have a midterm, but it’s always take home and they have all my possible exam questions at the beginning of the semester.”
Many students will have to spend more than $100 on individual textbooks before they can study for midterms, with many spending close to $500 or more per semester.
Textbooks and other study sources can be found at the Milner Library.