Ron Hammond, Phd, professor at Utah Valley State College, has quit using textbooks in his classes. Why? They’re too expensive.
The cost of textbooks is rising faster than inflation and Hammond doesn’t feel right forcing his students to purchase ever more expensive books on top of their already expensive tuition and fees.
“I think it’s immoral because of the cost of it,” Hammond told the Central Utah Daily Herald.
Instead of textbooks, Hammond has been assigning journal articles and other reading materials that his students can check out from the library or download from the internet, a practice which, if every one of their professors did it, would save students (on average) $900 a year.
It took Hammond a year to rewrite his own curriculum, after throwing out all his old textbooks. “It was worth it in the long run,” Hammond said.
We always appreciated professors who did this when we were in college. At least at our college, providing xeroxed readings from various sources via downloadable PDFs instead of multiple textbooks was common. Often we could get away with sharing the textbook with a friend or using the copy on reserve at the library.
Hooray for professors who understand that college is expensive!
UVSC prof. quits books [Daily Herald] (Thanks, Octavia!)
(Photo:MARIO RUIZ/Daily Herald)
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As a lowly adjunct, I don’t get to pick texts for intro classes yet, but I find it madly frustrating because a) the books ARE expensive and my students are not rich and b) a lot of them SUCK BALLS. I’m constantly saying, “Your authors say X, but that’s actually not true.” Beyond that, it’s frustrating to structure your course to a textbook when it’s not the way that you personally would structure the course (in liberal arts).
I had to supplement my medical ethics text with so much outside material this year just to provide adequate coverage that I think with a few “intro” articles to the subject (which was almost all the textbook was useful for), we could be entirely in a coursepack or even online. *IF* they’ll allow me to pick my own text.
Also if I have document services xerox things one at a time throughout the semester they don’t charge for it, whereas the same number of pages all at once becomes a “coursepack” for which they charge. So I do a lot of one-off copying so my students don’t have to pay.
Constantly-updating math books make me furious. I’m willing to suck it up for, like, history books. But it’s STUPID for low-level math courses!
@kryx: Oops, my mistake, the Texbook Letter published it 8 years ago. The article itself was written decades ago. ~_~
@nekussa:
I have worked for many college textbook publishers, and I considered most of their products to be useless. The production process for textbooks, like sausage, is not pretty; and the compromises and errors in the content are only slightly more egregious than the marketing techniques. The textbook publishing industry is as outdated and unscrupulous as the recording industry.
With that said, I grant that most of the fault for the continued use of textbooks lies with lazy, ignorant instructors and the overly politicized review process.
BLUWAPADOO–internet articles are no good as they aren’t refereed. Anyone can say anything online so how can you trust the material?
Even though I prefer academic journal articles and books published by University Presses (these are where the cutting-edge research is found), I would encourage everybody to do the readings–even from textbooks. You will find things we didn’t cover in class due to time, other opinions and maybe you’ll even find something that interests you. Also, they are great review aids for tests.
Bravo to this professor! I wish there were more like him when I was in school.
One of the worst textbook scams with is computer textbooks that come with software or extra content that must be “unlocked” online. Typically only the first person who buys the book gets to use the software, anyone who buys the book used then has to either pay a fee to get it unlocked for them, or they can’t use it at all. I hope college professors become wise to that scam as well and don’t assign any of the extra content in their classes.
In the meantime, half.com was my best friend in college when it came to buying and selling my textbooks. I was able to buy them for cheap, and then sell them at a good price so that I got back at least half the price that I paid.
Also, there’s very little content that changes between editions when it comes to computer or math books, so you can get away with using a cheaper previous edition and just xerox any changed pages that you need from a classmate that has a new one.
@JCookie7: “they are doing so against copyright law.”
While I know a lot of profs ARE abusing copyright, there are a lot of ways to put together coursepacks without doing so. I generally use small sections of novels/texts well within fair use (and always say “and you should SO go read this, it’s really good!”) and I specifically solicit articles FOR USE IN MY COURSE. Since I teach ethics, I usually lecture on the general ethical concepts, and then I ask professionals in the field (not academics) to write about their experiences applying the ethical concepts. I get great articles with a lot of relevant to my students that way, without any copyright concerns.
@Ray Wert Jr: How does UVSC stack up? Terribly. UVSC is the school that is *everyone’s* second choice. Here in Utah, UVSC is known as the school that Mormons go to when they don’t get accepted at BYU (the Mormon-run University).
UVSC is really a sad place.
We are stating that we are moving to a digital, and paperless world. I was not aware that college still required so many textbooks of their students. I have just finished my first degree in Business and have not purchased one book during my studies.
If any books were recommended, I would study at the library and xerox only parts needed, for many of these books are not even used for the entire course. In addition, the instructors provided a lot of the material by pdf on the course’s website. This way we are able to have it handy wherever there is internet (not just home).
Education is so expensive as it is, why do we need to spend so much more money on books that mostly will not be used past the course?
@andrewsmash: “are also selling books to the various PTA’s out there who buy text books for the K-12 system.”
They’re also responsible for the swings between “phonics” and “whole language” and other sorts of K-12 educational theory swings. The textbook publishers will throw their weight behind a new educational lobby every few years becuase then if the state adopts a new curriculum, EVERYBODY BUYS NEW TEXTBOOKS. Whereas if you stick with the same curriculum, a lot of school will use 20-year-old books.
@QB: How does the publisher prevent you from using older editions? I don’t see how they can actually do anything about it if you feel like teaching from an old one. (I’m not calling you a liar I just understand how that works.)
In my TV Production classes, my profs. did the same thing. I guess the school would pressure them into choosing a book, but we never used them.
I had a professor who wrote his own books, and would generate a unique serial number for each book. You had to “register” each book in order to access the quizzes. The result – the books could not be sold back.
Worse, they were printed at the college copy-center for $5 and resold by the professor for $85.
Crummy Econ class… AND professor.
The thing about textbooks that drives me crazy, though, are the DVDs and CDs that come with them. Unless it’s a language class I never use that stuff. Last semester I took a Logic class where the book cost 80 dollars used (I got 30 back for it at the bookstore). Of course it came with a useless CD that drove the price of the book up. The previous edition had all of the same information, but different problems-and of course the old edition was the only copy on reserve at the library!
$900… If you have any computer-related classes a single book can run $200 easy, and usually you need two or three for one course.
Two piss-offs with Textbooks. 1, the way colleges sell them used. Taking a hundred dollar book for the example. New, $100, used $75. IF you can sell it back at the end of the course (which means good enough condition, no newer version out, PLUS they still plan to use it for the next term) they buy them back for $25, and won’t often buy back ones that were used when bought. Fucking Ripoff.
Now the other piss-off is the whole reprint issue. New version of the book comes out, everyone gets skrewed. Can’t find em used, can’t sell back the previous version. The worst part is that usually LESS THAN 10% of the book is any different.
Three stories:
First, I had a friend in my Microeconomics class. We were sitting there, five days before the final exam, and we noticed his book looked different than ours. Same company’s book, same series, but his was MACROeconomics. Everything we went over in class, all the assignments, readings, and page numbers for said work were all the exact same. He had the wrong bloody textbook for the entire course, and nobody knew because the only difference was the cover, and the last three pages in the final chapter.
Then there was our book for Business Finance. It was never used. Ever. Ninety dollars and the teacher always used powerpoint or handouts the entire course.
And worse than those was the fun with course changes some of my classmates went through. About seven of them I was in classes with were signed up for a course-preferred elective. They all bought their books, then on the first day, the teacher told them the course had switched textbooks to a different publisher’s ones. They had to buy the new, more expensive textbook, PLUS the bookstore wouldn’t allow a return since they weren’t going to be using that book at the college anymore (and yes I know that wasn’t legal for them to do).
RECTILINEAR PROPAGATION –they make the books unavailable (pulp remaining unsold copies). The College Bookstore helps with this and won’t stock the older editions. Distributors, including all the used book salespeople, won’t buy back editions that are going out of print so they won’t make it into the bookstores as used copies.
This is a good step towards helping us students out. To be honest, I learned the most from a sports marketing teacher that never gave us any books, but rather showed examples of how he successes (and more importantly failed) in his dealings as owner of a semi-pro basketball team. I think many majors require, and NEED textbooks, but many can simply teach the material that needs to be learned. In addition most lessons can come from other books (non-textbooks). One example that I can recall is a book that still helps me to this day for a management class, Good To Great.
With private college tuition prices expected to be $41,771 ([www.thinkfinancial.com]) I think someone needs to step up and take the students best interests into account. I commend this professor and for any professor or school that helps to keep students out of terrible debt and has the courage to let others know that this has gone on for too long.
He looks like Lewis Black.
Thrust, You must have been Info Systems at the cancerous VCU in Richmond VA. They are ‘growing the school’ at warp speed thourgh the city. Now they have built a new business building to sit mostly empty when the old one was just fine. I had financial management and it was a joke. Guy barley used the book and we basically learned that there were great calculators out there (thanks HP for the 20$ course passer) that would get you through the moronic course. I hated with a passion the bookstore prices and it should be investigated along with financial aid why the costs of books are so insane.
No book published is worth over 50$ The DVDs that come with a lot of tech courses are garbage and 90% of the time dont work becoause of the copyright protection… My cisco book software refused to let me use it until the vendor sent a patch for the freaking license key… And the book was 3 years old!!!! They couldnt ship with a fixed copy???
My favorits memory was my grandmother passing away and an instructor insisted that I had to turn my paper in the day of the funeral to get full credit. (class started 1 hour before the funeral and school was 36 miles from the funeral location) It was a dumb ‘business writing class’ and was a total waste of time. I have to admit that it taught me that there are a lot of self important jackasses in the college system.
@andrewsmash: PTA doesn’t choose the textbooks where I’m from! Perhaps you meant school boards? At the HS level, districts get to choose their own books, which is somewhat better. I agree, definitely that the textbooks have been overpriced at the K-12 level…the costs routinely exceed the amount provided in the budget for the textbooks!
When I was in college textbooks were the only option, yes I am that old.
When I was a guest instructor for the department chair at the college I worked at we did have a textbook. At least it was used for multiple classes and held some post college usefulness. For the classes I taught, I could have come up with better written materials over an afternoon and photocopied them for free.
Because of the required textbook I was forced to teach an inferior theory and technique to students.
After this I worked on a project where a college bookstore was the client. I learned all about the total textbook scam. The one the book sellers hate the most is students selling books to other students. This is the largest portion of why they force books into new editions constantly.
My S.O. is currently back in school and the book system is a joke. Books are easily $100 each and I have a stack of them downstairs that are either only worth about $2 – $6 each and some the bookstore won’t buy back at all. Even on half.com the books don’t have enough value to bother posting them.
You know that a high speed older photocopy machine is not that expensive. I see them given away for free on freecycle and craigslist. Some enterprising students could go together on one book and pirate their own copies. I am sure though, the book industry would develop their own RIAA style police squad to counter this.
The trend I am seeing has been a migration from textbooks to course packets, which are also expensive due to the reason mentioned above, and now transition to online materials.
The online materials are required for the student to learn and most students don’t like to use them on the computer so before classes students are lining up waiting to print out hundreds of pages of course materials. Some colleges charge for all this printing. The transition to digital is actually resulting in the cost and labor burden of course packets being pushed onto the students and the computer labs. Some college computer labs can print 1 million pages a month. Not good for the environment and not necessarily good for the wallet either.
I have plenty of professors who are doing this as much as possible. What doesn’t help? IT policies that say you may not print “textbooks” from the Internet–even if your teacher sends them to you. Boo, IT.
Another professor wrote his own textbook and sells it for $15 each semester to students, making nothing off it because the $15 goes straight to his printing company.
RE: Professors using their own texts, it depends on the circumstances.
For isntance at my alma mater there was a class that was required for EVERY STUDENT, the text book was written by 2 faculty members, and a new “edition” was published every year even though every year some snarky student compiles a list of typos that have not been fixed. The bookstore will not buy them back nor sell them used. You can of course get the text from an upperclassman, BUT the text also came with an online subscription to some site that you needed to complete one of the units. The subscription expires at the end of the semester so if you get a used copy, you still don’t have all the pieces.
This is obviously a ridiculous and lucrative scam.
OTOH I had a professor who had us using her own CS book. She basically gave us galleys and declared us proofreaders for the as-yet-unpublished next edition. She stood by her work, but she recognized the conflict of interest in forcing your students to pay for your own textbook.
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During my senior year the BN-owned campus bookstore declared that in order to get a full refund for returning a book, you had to have a drop form. Their excuse was preventing students from photocopying relevant sections and then returning the books, but it seems to me they just wanted to gouge as much as possible.
@acambras: You pretty much caught every point I was going to post in here. Good job
I worked at a college, and the sad part is that text book publishers hound instructors constantly about whether they’ve had a chance to review this or that new print. It’s good to see some instructors out there doing away with text books. I’d say on average I’d read maybe 25% of my college text books in some classes but usually I would read 2% and not give the book a second glance. Scamsville.
I am going to play a little devil’s advocate here (even though I came to the comment stream late.)
My prof wrote text books and he explained to me why the books are so expensive. Unlike a popular fiction or even non-fiction title that can on the shelf at a bookstore for years and still sell, a text book has to make all the money put into it within the first year of its publication. Textbooks simply don’t have a shelf life or the wide distribution of commercial books.
The book has to pay the writer(s), the publisher, and for the materials (paper, binding, CDs) within 12 months of being published. Depending on the press, it sometimes take that long for a text to break even.
Textbooks are not a money business, for every book that gets accepted in multiple colleges (and thus warrants cheaper pricing), there are 10 books that are used for one or two semesters at a community college, never to be heard from again.
Much of the money spent by text book sellers is aimed at getting teachers to buy contracts for a particular book and the instructors never seem to understand the cost of receiving 4 or 5 text books for free in any given semester as the company tries to sell them on a new text. They have to fill these texts with bells and whistles just to get the professor’s attention. My professor calls the process the “Last Free Lunch in America” because of all the schwag they get.
There are instructors who do realize this promotions process only raises the cost. These professors keep a book edition until they are forced out of it, who don’t use text books or who choose the cheapest editions possible.
But from someone who worked for a professor who published his own texts, there was little money in it, less glory, and the only reason he published his own book was because he was tired of using substandard materials, so he made his own. He wasn’t out to gouge his students and had no problem with students buying used copies and always made copies available to those students who chose not to buy a book.
good for him! nice to see a teacher using their brain and care more about teaching, than the politics of the pencil pushers and their quotas.
You can tell that the publishers really “care” for students when after about 2 years a brand new version of the text comes out making old text useless as they are changed not enough so that the content is drastically different but just enough to screw you over in your class. These publishers aren’t going broke any time soon , Thompson a very large Canadian publisher is worth a few billion dollars alone. For any incoming post secondary students, buying you texts used is teh way to go!!
Textbooks are terrible, but what’s worse is that some classes with an online component (like some English classes) you have to buy a book when all you needed was the access code for the online portion. Last semester I did an English class and NEVER used the books, but I had to have that code so I could submit my essays.
However, my college puts forth an effort to get students cheaper books. One of the speech classes got Thompson to make a special “Amarillo College Edition” of a $90 book. The college sells their special edition (which is done on cheap paper in B&W) for less than a used copy of the old book.
What else sucked was this one class that taught you how to use Word and Excel. The book(s) were almost $300 in the bundle. I borrowed a friend’s copy of the lab book (the lecture book could have been titled shit I already know) and copied all 11 lab assignments and did them in ONE day. I still had to pay $70 or so for the software for the online lab-tests. At least Thompson sold that seperately.
heheh. i only bought texts my freshman year. after that, i found lacking one was a very convenient way to find a cute study partner.
At my old university, they had a program where they would charge a $15 for each class you had signed up for … in exchange, you could “rent” whatever books you needed. If you didn’t need textbooks for the class, you could get your $15 back, though it was a hassle to do it.
It was a pretty sweet system, I think. I don’t know why more schools don’t adopt something similar, especially for Intro classes where the information doesn’t change all that much.
Most people get their books before the semester starts, but I always wait until the second week of class before I purchase any of them. Reason being, I dropped a class last semester, but the bookstore only has a short return policy, so I dropped the class and was stuck with 5 books. Another class I had required 4 books, but as it turns out they were for “reference” purposes and I didn’t even need them.
Sadly, being in a computer field, tech books are highly over priced. I have one professor who is of the mind that anything you need to know can probably be found on the internet. During tests he even lets us use the internet, since his reasoning is that in the real world, you will have that available to you.
Sometimes when I adjunct, I have to use the text the school assigns, and sometimes I can choose my own. I hate that CD-ROMs are packaged with everything also; never really use them. I’m in English, so I have a lot of options in terms of course packs and other readings, but I’m really irritated with the way that publishers will try to conceal the retail cost of books from faculty so that we’ll just assign whatever looks good, without regard to the price to the student. I go to the effort, but a lot of teachers don’t.
I always mention on the first day of class that anyone who cannot afford the books should talk to me. I can almost always get one from the department or from my own library, and I get a copy of it put on reserve in the university library. And I tell about half.com and Amazon Marketplace, and the book-buyback scam. Most of the time, I keep my own course books, but I’ll sell them if I’m sure I’ll never use them again. I’ve had very good luck getting 80% of retail on Amazon.
Yay! Good for him.
I had a class where the teacher wrote his own book but wasn’t published yet, so he had our class proof read it from PDF documents. What made it better was that he was an awesome writer for a physics teacher.
@ElenorR: It’s generally true that textbook authors don’t do it for the money. But the publishers are RAKING IT IN! Don’t believe that poor-publisher sob story one bit. They are ratcheting up profits because they know their days are numbered.
Someone already mentioned the recording-industry analogy, right-on. In this age, there is less and less need all the time for publishers and bookstores. Content creators should be connecting directly with their customers.
I’ve actually had a class from Dr. Hammond and I found him to be an excellent teacher. It was one of those lower-division class that they make everyone take. As I recall we didn’t have a textbook. Instead we bought some stuff from the bookstore that he wrote for the class. It wasn’t expensive at all. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of $5-6 since it was basically just some xeroxed stuff.
At my school (the University of Florida) almost all of my professors have used these course packs, or assigned a softcover collection of articles costing around $20.
In the few classes where the professor has been an author, its either been at cost or a photocopied edition of the actual book. Besides that, all textbooks I have had to look at have had non-circulating copies in the university library.
Fair warning: A blatant plug follows.
For those with professors who still require textbooks for their class I would recommend AbeBooks.com.
You just enter the ISBN of the textbook you need and their search engine lists people who have imported the international version and are selling it domestically. The international versions are generally softbound and drastically cheaper, but otherwise identical to the US edition.
Every book has a message on the cover to the effect of “Not for sale in the United States.” So hopefully you’re not embarrassed by such things. Bookstores never sell these because they would loose their distribution contracts.
If you plan on keeping your textbooks this is the way to go, hands down. But if you resell books after you are done with them you should consider the resale value (but remember: you never know when a new edition might come out rendering your book worthless). Plus you need to order a few weeks in advance to be sure they will arrive on time (or pay extra for shipping).
I am only a satisfied customer of the site and have no vested interest in it.
Full disclosure: I work for a publisher. I don’t get why textbook publishers are being vilified for making money? Like any business with shareholders, they need to show growth. Authors don’t write the books for free, editors don’t work for free. It’s a costly business and tons of cash goes into developing products. Believe it or not, folks do work very hard to write quality texts….
I’m not sure how it’s the fault of the publisher that students are only using 5% of their text – seems like the fault there should fall on the students shoulders. After all, presumably they are enrolled in the class to learn….
Rumor of the Day: We won’t know for a few hours if Harry dies, but Mickey Kaus is hearing whispers that the demise of TimesSelect could be imminent. Mark this day on the calendar as the first time ever we read a Kaus item and said, “Oh, please let it be true!”
The college I attend (Case Western Reserve University) also makes these “course packs” for professors who don’t want to assign a text book. The difference is these “course packs” which are essentially Xeroxed notes or selected chapters from different text books are often more expensive than a standard used text book. One class I took had a course pack consisting of about 120 3-hole-punched sheets of notes sold for $120. The kicker was that the professor did nothing during class but project the EXACT same notes on the board and read verbatim from them. Of course, you can’t return a course pack as the book store won’t take them back.
Ahhh….Is there a better scam than college text books and those who publish and sell them?
I can relate to all the horror stories here. Additionally, I hated when some of my professors wanted us to buy books that they’ve written, even though there were better alternatives out there.
Some student-friendly professors usually posted required reading as PDFs on their web sites, so all you had to do was download them. But they would usually require one or two books to be purchased anyway.
All English Comp classes did not require books at all, since all readings were just portions of books that were xeroxed and put together in a packet, which ran about $25. I only had one other class in a different field that did this, and to this day I’m baffled as to why only very few professor do this. Of course, this won’t work for all courses, but I had many classes were plenty of the information in the book were either of little relevance, or were covered by the professor in class. Why not then pick the most important parts of the book and make it into a nice, cheap packet?
Copyright law gets even hairier when you’re a music major like me. Many of my classes have required listening assignments and projects using recordings. Good thing my school turns a blind eye to copyright infringement– I don’t need the RIAA breathing down my neck when I’m just trying to do my schoolwork.
Given the quality of the content, most college textbooks that I’ve seen are quite a bargain even at full price.
Yes! Someone else who’s read “Lies My Teacher Taught Me”! The author is a really cool guy, too.
Just a week or so ago I went to Half Price Books and saw most of my science textbooks which I paid $100-$150 for (sure, 10 yrs ago) at the bargain price of $5-$6.
The problem with all this supply-and-demand defense of textbook costs is that supply-and-demand is a concept based on an open market, while at many universities the textbook market is a strict monopoly. “Customizing content” only makes this worse. At my university the only way to find out what books are required for a class is to find them on efollet.com ‘s sub-site for that class, so you can then buy it online from them. However, many times they just give a partial title, no author or only one of several authors, and no edition, so you can’t go get the book elsewhere.
They don’t give ISBN, even though it’s clearly the way they organize their system because when I go back to price my used books to sell back I’m asked to use ISBN. Then they tell me my $160 book is worth $15, and I see them sell it in a month for $110. Looooove monopolistic market abuse and 600%+ profit margin.
I always hated when it came time to buy books. Being a Business major at a private school always meant that I’d end up buying a book that was either a new edition or something that the professor decided to write. I’ve paid over $1200 numerous times for my books (which is RIDICULOUS!!) and then when it came time to sell back the books that you just don’t have the need for you’re lucky if you get $10 for a book that you probably didnt even open the entire semester. It’s a total scam. But I did learn that by either hunting for the books online or buying them from an off-campus bookstore was always cheaper than buying them from the campus bookstore. Also scouting out the classes a semester before you take them and just going up to random students who already have the book and asking them to see if they were gonna sell was also a good way to save money…that way you both walk out better off. they make more money off the book and you can get it for a lot cheaper..plus maybe get lucky and have some good notes in there.
I studied abroad in England for a year. The first semester, I received my syllabi to find out that instead of having certain required books, all of my classes had numerous recommended texts. When I asked an English friend how I know which ones I should buy, she informed me that in order to be listed as highly recommended, there had to be enough copies of the book on hand at the library for every student in the copy to take one out. I checked out the library at my home school the next year to discover that they did not have a single copy of any of the newest editions of my textbooks. It was actually a policy that they could not have them. Talk about not having the best interest of your students in mind.
I almost never bought textbooks in college (I was a history major). The information that a professor believes is the most important is contained in the lecture. Textbooks are really for reference, and if I had taken a ton of math/science courses, then I probably would have had no choice but to buy them.
I decided to stop buying books when I spent $400 my first semester in college and sold the almost unused books back to the store for $5 a piece.
The books I did buy I got from half.com or used from Amazon.
@ElenorR: Unlike a popular fiction or even non-fiction title that can on the shelf at a bookstore for years and still sell
Popular fiction books stay on the shelf for *one month* unless they’re bestsellers.