Staff Editorial: A not-so textbook solution

After a decade with Barnes & Noble, the university is signing a new contract to run the University Book Center. Students are eyeing a "student-run co-op" model, which they hope will provide more affordable textbooks. Administrators are concerned primarily with the stability of UBC, and so they are naturally looking toward a corporate-run model. But we think there's a third way.

Why not play to our strengths creatively and turn the bookstore into a business management opportunity for our students? We have an internationally esteemed business school, which should provide the stability and profitability administrators are looking for, while also allowing for student involvement and flexibility. Running a bookstore is a complicated and difficult proposition, and the university can't risk having a student co-op fail the day before classes start. At the same time, we shouldn't have anyone running the bookstore who doesn't have students' interests as their No. 1 priority.

The project could be managed by a mix of professionals and faculty members, and staffed by students in a series of academic course/internship combinations. It would be an opportunity for students to acquire some real-world experience on the campus, from marketing to supply-chain management. It's not a way of tricking students into unpaid labor, either - the university's own masters of business administration admissions website places professional work experience first in the list of criteria for admission.

More importantly, having a university-run bookstore provides the flexibility to enact creative cost-saving measures. In 2003, The New York Times reported the owner of the University Bookstore at Purdue was ordering textbooks from abroad to take advantage of international discounts and pass the savings along to students. The University of Texas' cooperative bookstore (run by George Mitchell, who operated UBC 25 years ago) features a wide range of attractive features, from student discounts to 100 percent investment of bookstore profits back into the university.

Administrators are worried about taking on the responsibility for running a bookstore. But if the university wants to compete with the better bankrolled, we're going to have to take some risks. This proposal is about more than bookstores. This represents an opportunity for the university to creatively leverage its strengths to achieve its goals. We don't have the endowments of Harvard or Yale. We're never going to achieve excellence through sheer wealth. And as a public institution built to open the promises of education beyond the elites and the Ivy League, that's fitting.