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Custom textbooks could also be pricey

After reading “Custom texts trump pricey new editions” (Jan. 25), I was happy that the issue of high textbook prices was receiving attention. However, I was concerned with the idea of custom textbooks.

Custom texts do not seem to pose a solution. Currently, publishing companies use unfair practices such as charging more in the U.S., coming out with unnecessary new editions, and bundling books with additional products that a student may not need.

Custom textbooks would still be under the whim of publishers and could be priced unfairly. New editions of the custom text could still be released quickly or bundled with additional products that a student may not wish to purchase.

Also, since the book is limited to such a small audience, the used book market would be even more stifled. Currently, a student at UCLA could sell a book over the Internet if the course was no longer being offered here, but custom textbooks prohibit this.

As a student who has spent over $400 in one quarter on textbooks, I understand the burden that buying pricey books places on a limited income.

In order to solve this problem, students should be educated about the issue of textbooks and talk to their professors about issues that concern them.

Professors can help by using multiple syllabi for different editions of a book and expressing concerns with new editions and bundling practices to publishers.

While the problem is being fixed, I encourage students to look at alternatives. Alternatives may include buying used, buying books from overseas sources such as Amazon.uk, which often have lower prices even after exchange rates and shipping, or borrowing the book from the library.

Jolene Mitchell

Fourth-year microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics student

Poor need access to health care

High health care costs, lack of education and information to facilitate illness prevention, lack of consistent access to health care resources, lack of early diagnosis and comprehensive treatment – all these are life and death differences between those with insurance coverage and those without.

There are approximately 40 million Americans without any sort of health care coverage. Millions more have inadequate coverage or sharply rising premiums. A large percentage of those uninsured today are in fact low-income families and the elderly, not welfare cheats as many claim.

Millions who are now vulnerable had some kind of coverage in the past. These facts reveal an ongoing, embarrassing contradiction within our purportedly advanced culture, as well as evidence of failure to uphold our fundamental values. This morally bankrupt, survival-of-the-fittest mentality – resulting in a double-standard of health care access – is unconscionable, representing the worst sort of discrimination based on wealth.

Until these social and economic inequities are substantively corrected, poverty will remain one of the United States’ top killers.

Solomon M. Matsas

Former staff, UCLA Student Affairs