USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center
Abstract
Adoption of no-cost text options by the Department of Rhetoric and Language for Core A courses could save University of San Francisco students up to 250,000peryear.Thecostofnew,bookstore−purchasedtextbooksforaUSFstudenttakingthemostcommonor“normative”paththroughCoreA(RHET103,RHET110/N,RHET120)averages316.14. Textbooks costs vary widely and are highly unpredictable: the most expensive sections can have more than 300% higher costs for books than the least expensive. A student landing in the most costly sections would spend up to 492.50ontextsrequiredforthe“normative”path(176.36 more than the average). Costs are unevenly distributed, partly due to high variation between sections, and partly due to an unfair impact of placement practices. Students with the highest SAT scores have the lowest textbook costs. USF uses SAT scores to place students into RHET 130/131, a two-course sequence that fulfills Core A1 and A2. Students in this track would spend an average of 199.15tobuynewtextbooksnecessarytofulfillCoreA.SATsarehighlycorrelatedwithfamilyincomeandfamilylevelofeducation;effectively,themostprivilegedstudentsatUSFhavethelowestCoreAtextbookcosts(seeAppendix2).Vulnerablestudentsplacedinpre−RHET110courseshavehighertextbookcosts.InSpring2018,themeancostofnewrequiredtextbooksinRHET106/Nwas80.44 (max 105.50;min71.50). For a student placed in RHET 106 and unlucky enough to land in expensive sections, new Core A textbook costs would be almost three times higher than the cost for the average RHET 130/131 student