Editorial: Consider privatizing Pitt Book Center

For the past two weeks, Pitt students have been waiting for more than a win from the football…For the past two weeks, Pitt students have been waiting for more than a win from the football team.

More than any other year in recent history, students have been waiting in lines at The Book Center. Not only in the check-out area, but also on the sidewalk outside, students waited shoulder to shoulder as they quickly lost their summer paychecks to their fall books. And once they made it inside, it was often to find rows of empty shelves formerly containing binders and notebooks.

Of course, these problems were partially because of The Book Center’s recent temporary move from its normal location on Fifth Avenue. No move is without troubles; some delays are to be expected.

But the poorly managed transition fits within a longer tradition of average service and poor inventory control. Most are aware that the Pitt book-buying experience will be unpleasant, regardless of the location.

It’s time to change this experience. It’s time to privatize The Book Center. Outsource the day-to-day operations of the facility to a third party and have it run in a way similar to how Sodexo manages Pitt’s food services.

Pitt’s core mission statement, after all, is to provide high-quality undergraduate and gradute programs, engage in research, cooperate with industry and government in information exchange, offer continuing education programs and make available Pitt’s resources to the community, state, nation and world.

There is no mention in this mission of providing books with quality, timely service. If Pitt wants to fully engage in book selling, then it should — otherwise, the University should leave that responsibility to businesses built to speedily deliver books.

This isn’t an entirely novel (pun intended) idea. Temple and the University of Pennsylvania both have bookstores managed by Barnes & Noble. After Penn made its agreement in 1996, the school saw its book center transform from essentially a book warehouse, as Pitt’s is today, to a community meeting place purveying Penn gear and coffee.

Admittedly, many of the new Book Center renovations are designed to match this aesthetic. But as reported in The Daily Pennsylvanian, the Barnes & Noble relationship also allows Penn to “see trends in the larger marketplace” that it would otherwise miss. Nothing about the new renovations will be helping the center on this front.

Nor will The Book Center suddenly adapt the learn supply chains of large national organizations. Even the online component of the store will continue to lag, a discrepancy made obvious by spending only a few moments on Pitt’s and Penn’s book sites.

Would privatization lower costs? Probably not. Textbook prices are notoriously sticky, with publishers guarding prices and maintaining their high margins. Prices will still seem obscene.

But long-term, with the publishing industry entering a tumultuous reorganization, it might soon come to be that supply-chain capabilities and flexibility in a changing marketplace become the critical point in controlling costs. EBooks, tablets and the crowdsourcing of information are making old models of selling books extinct.

So which organization will be better at adapting to these changes: a national organization with resources and constant, crushing pressure to not go bankrupt, or a slow, institutionalized organization that can’t keep notebooks on the shelf?