Thursday 13-09-2018 - 10:21

Your Undergraduate Academic Officer, Saul, is here to help you save some £££s...

With the start of term rapidly approaching, many students will feel the pressure to start shelling out on often very expensive course texts. As my expansive collection of first year textbooks will tell you, many of the texts listed in module guides don’t actually need to be bought, and you’ll often not get around to actually using the ones you do buy. Here are a few tips to save you money and make sure you’re only buying the books you absolutely need.

The first tip is not to rush into buying anything. Your first term will start pretty slowly, so you won’t be burying your head in books straight away. Most lecturers will let you know in their first lecture what the essential texts are and, if you still have questions after this, feel free to ask after the lecture or in your first seminar.

If, after going to these lectures, you still seem to have a pretty hefty list of books you need, I’d recommend talking to previous students about which books they actually used frequently. Your college parents or members of our academic societies will be able to tell you which books are must-haves, and I guarantee they’ll help cut down the books you’ll need to a more manageable list.

Once you have your list ready, make sure you pop down to the library before adding anything to your shopping cart. They should have multiple copies of essential course texts and, in most cases, this will be more than enough to make sure you’re able to access a copy when you need it. You can also copy up to one chapter or 10% of a book in the library (whichever’s higher), so you can make sure you always have a copy of that crucial chapter for when revision comes around.

But even if the library doesn’t have enough copies of the text, there are still more ways to make sure you’re not spending more than you need to. With many textbooks, the revisions made between editions are very minor and usually don’t justify you needing to buy the latest edition. In spite of this, there’s often a massive difference in the prices between editions, so it’s definitely worth looking into whether you can get away with buying an older edition of a book. If you’re not sure about the differences between editions, ask your lecturers and they should be happy to tell you whether or not it’s worth buying the newest edition of a text.

Once you’ve worked out what you need to buy, it’s crucial you shop around to make sure you’re getting the best deal. You can usually get a good deal on the buy, sell and swap group on Facebook as students finishing their first year try to sell on their books at a discount price. Alternatively, some academic societies run second hand book sales and even your college parents might be able to help you out with getting the books you need.

As most of you will be getting used to budgeting for the first time and with so much going on in Durham in first term, it really is important to make sure you’re not spending more than you need to on your course texts. Hopefully this guide will help you spread your money a bit further.

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