James Hermon/Roundup
Pierce College’s Bookstore looses 30 percent in year-to-year revenue
The Pierce College Bookstore has not been able to compete with off campus and online textbook sales.
Many students have found that they can pay less for textbooks if they purchased them online.
“I buy my books online because I can rent them, I don’t think I’ve ever bought all my books from the bookstore since I’ve been a student at Pierce,” said Fenela Pahed, a Psychology major.
Online sites also offer the option to rent books, the process where students can pay a fraction of the actual cost of their books for a semester, and have the obligation of returning them at the end of the semester.
“I get the majority of my books from Woodland Text because they are cheaper,” said Aurial Granger, undecided major. “I usually get some of my books online but not really from the campus bookstore…I only get books from our bookstore when I can’t find them anywhere else.
Not all students are purchasing their books online or off campus. Some still prefer the convenience of buying textbooks on campus.
Prince Young, Sociology major; still prefers to purchase his textbooks from the bookstore.
“Its very easy to buy them at the bookstore on campus…it’s easy as one, two, three,” said Young. “The only problem with buying from the bookstore is managing to come up with the money to purchase them…I spent over $400 on textbooks this semester.”
The campus bookstore has also lost a great deal of revenue due to the drastic number of class courses that have been cut.
“The largest portion of sales comes from textbooks,” said Bruce Rosky, associated vice president of Administrative Services. “The college now has fewer students and courses offered… which reflects the fewer books sold in the book store.”
The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) mandates the budget each Community College has to pay instructors to teach and courses to offer based on the amount of money the district has been given by the state.
“The district has mandated that Pierce offer less courses in order to match the amount of money given by the state,” said Rosky. “The is formula called the workload reduction.”
Other student services have been affected as a result of the workload reduction.
The college has lost a generous amount of revenue generated from the sales of parking passes.
“The cost of up keeping the eight parking lots comes from the funds generated from the sales of the parking permits,” said Rosky. “For the past year the revenue has been less than the up keep amount.”
When the college transfers funds from one college account to another it is called an intro fund transfer.
“Anytime a fund is over spent the college has to use funds from another account to replace the lost,” said Rosky. “It’s an obligation to transfer funds from the general college fund to the one that is delinquent.”
In addition to the bookstore and parking passes, the campus’ Country Café has lost a great deal in revenue.
“One of the key reasons for the drop in sales is the lack of students,” said Linda Daniels- Brown, Country Café manager. “Students are dropping out.”
The college is faced with the task of making up the money that has been lost from the three student services.
TEXTBOOK PUBLISHER PUBLISHER AMAZON PIERCE BOOKSTORE
STEIN & ROWE MCGRAW-HILL 118.82 95.78 131.50
LENKEIT MCGRAW-HILL 83.34 72.92 92.25
JURMAIN CENGAGE 120.99 114.06 138.70
NANDA CENGAGE 148.99 113.03 169.80
EMBER PEARSON 121.33 108.36 125.90
The above chart was created by Phil Stein, Adjunct instructor of Anthropology; to show the cost differences between Anthropology textbooks at the Pierce College bookstore and Amazon.com.