As the holiday shopping period begins, students on a budget need to remember that the Harvard shopping period is only around the corner--and with it the next round of textbook purchases, with books that can place an even heavier weight on wallets than on knapsacks.

This semester, students taking Social Analysis 10, "Principles of Economics," paid $80 for a new copy of their textbook. In Chemistry 5, "Introduction to Principles of Chemistry," one book costs $93.50 new. And in Chemistry 17, a "value pack" including a textbook and study guide sells for $111.60.

"It's a rip-off," says Victoria O. Santana '02.

Students frequently single out the Coop as the culprit, the Coop says change needs to come from professors, but professors lack a financial incentive to control the costs of books for their courses.

The result is an industry that deviates from the typical free market, filled with middlemen who lack incentive to lower prices, maintained by a group of student consumers held captive to their syllabi.

One university, Cornell, is using technology to restructure the market, but it's a radical step initiated by an administration committed to saving students money.

Harvard Coop: The Distributor

Chair of the Undergraduate Council Student Affairs Committee John Paul Rollert '00, says the primary rants he hears from students on their textbook costs blame the Coop, where they buy most of their books, for overpricing.

Coop officials say, however, that there is no fortune to be made in textbook sales. In fact, they say that textbooks are offered more as a service to students than a profitable venture.

Coop President Jeremiah P. Murphy '73 was happy to explain where the 25 to 28 percent retailer markup on a textbook goes. Of this markup, about 11 percent goes to the administrative costs of book purchasing, including hiring staff to obtain book lists from professors.

"We go through the trouble, the expense, the frustration of trying to get book lists from professors as early as possible," Murphy says.

A further 2 percent of the sale price covers the costs of book transportation to the Coop--and back on unsold texts and returns.

Physical operations including shelving, customer service and sales staff account for 13 percent of the sale price leaving the cooperative with a 2 percent profit.

But as a cooperative, any profit must be returned to its members proportional to their purchases. The rebate for the previous fiscal year was announced in October as 4.5 percent. Since the standard Coop profit on a textbook sale is 2.5 percent lower than the rebate, the Coop actually takes a loss on textbook sales to Coop members.

"We're able to provide the textbooks based on being more profitable in other areas of the store," Murphy says. He explains that serving the needs of Harvard and MIT students is not a road to profit for the store but part of its core mission.