The New York Times editorial board called on Congress to make college textbooks more affordable. The measure they endorsed wouldn’t do anything Soviet like directly cap prices, but it would require textbook makers to tell professors exactly how much books would cost impoverished students.
The bill would also ban textbook makers from jacking up prices by bundling unnecessary CDs and other extras. Finally, schools would be required to publish a list of required books long before the start of classes so students could avail themselves of the free market and ferret out the cheapest prices.
Faculty should also be doing their part. Instead of assigning two expensive books and using just a few chapters of each, professors should order custom books with only the chapters they intend to assign.Congress, though, should do what it can, because mounting textbook prices are one of a number of factors that are pushing higher education further out of reach of many young people.
The board encouraged all students to step up and join the Campaign to Reduce College Textbook Costs. Be the change you want to see and all.
That Textbook Costs How Much? $200? [NYT]
Make Textbooks Affordable [Campaign to Reduce College Textbook Costs]
H.R. 4137 – The College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 [THOMAS]
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@SAugsburger: I got my information out of the horse’s mouth. I think hearing it out of the professor is pretty good evidence. I asked because, at first, I didn’t believe it despite it coming out of another individual in the department. It was true. And students were stuck with a useless textbook.
I buy my textbooks. It is the starting point for the papers we write. In my graduate program, we don’t have traditional papers, we write, discuss, and apply the information. Lots of papers and lit reviews.
Dangerousliberal, I agree with you that it is unethical to keep a textbook out of the library all semester. At my last school, we had someone in my program who did that. The professors became wise to it and put the book on reserve at the library. We could take it and make copies if we wanted to, but we could not take it out and keep it as our own. If I end up teaching at a university (god forbid), I will do that too. It is only fair.
The education INDUSTRY is not unlike any other-they are there to make a profit.And that they do using the altrustive motives and/or dreams and desires of the students.And you question the price and your against education.
And like the real estate industry the student loan INDUSTRY is starting to suffer delinquencies.And they are suffering because the end customer-the education industry capitalized on the fact ‘that somebody else’ was paying for it in the form of a loan.Just as is the public education INDUSTRY-they seem to forget the taxpayers are paying for that as well.
Don’t get me wrong;you still have anal retentive academic purist who feels that if it’s not the latest and greatest it’s useless.
As recommended perhaps not only should students get the book information ahead they also should get the subject matter in more detail.I passed calculus using a lot of supplemental material like Schuams & others as much as I did the required text.
@thelushie: In social science we call this the N of 1 problem: One observation or data point does not make a data set, or a trend. I think that there may be some incentives for using some textbnooks, but I am not sure they are “kickbacks.” Unless one equates a kickback with a salary.
I do agree about the profs putting the texts on reserve–I do that every term for the exact reason you list, and most profs I know do as well.
@arstal: Yes, some of my colleagues are the problem, and some (by no means all) of us are sensitive to the book price problem. Of course, in some disciplines, all books are really expensive: the books in econ or engineering are more expensive, but maybe there’s a cost/benefit thing happening here–they cost a lot because people wo write (and read) these books have higher income potential than poli sci majors.
@u1itn0w2day: I am not sure I get your point, except to note with some admiration that you passed calc without the textbook–not an easy feat. Here’s a cheap book to consider as well: Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.
I formerly worked for a textbook publisher in the production department and I can say for sure that having custom published editions with specific chapters would be logistically impossible and would probably end up costing MORE than a complete edition.
I don’t work in that industry any more, so I don’t say this because I have some interest in the textbook industry being profitable, BUT: Producing a textbook is incredibly, incredibly, incredibly expensive compared to just about any other type of publishing. Not only you have to pay writers, but image rights are major part of book budgets nowadays due to a perception in the education industry that you need lots of graphics in them, even for college textbooks. Also, the sheer number of state and local textbook boards is a huge regulatory expense.
I was a college student not too long ago, too, so I’m sympathetic, but you have to be realistic about the expenses associated with these things, especially in incredibly specialized fields like IT/the sciences/etc.
@DangerousLiberal:
That PhD (in a social science) I am working for means nothing now that you explained to me that one observation doesn’t make a data set. Yeah, no shit, sherlock. I never even hinted that all professors did it. My old mentor told everyone that yeah the book is there, but don’t buy it if you plan on coming to class everyday (and with his classes, that was the only way you would pass).
What I meant is the opprotunity is out there. I know of one who took it. There are others who take it as it would not be offered unless it was profitable. And you can call it incentive, commission, or extra beer money but what it comes down to is a kickback to use the book.
@DangerousLiberal:
And considering you are a professor, one word applies: bias. You are bias to your profession. And yes, you may not be a problem, but alot of your colleagues are.
I couldn’t believe the prices of books when I went to school. In one class I had a book that was a regular trade-size paperback – the size that costs around $14.95 at the bookstore if it’s a novel or nonfiction book. As a textbook? $50. Crazy!
And I also loved the astronomy book that was packaged with a CD that we never used. Since it had the CD, there were only new copies available, and the bookstore wouldn’t buy it back. This book (paperback) was around $150 or so.
Most of my professors had a set of textbooks on reserve or used a reader that we got at a copy shop. Of course, in a lot of my English classes we had novels or short story/essay collections that were very easily available at the library or at a normal bookstore. : )
@DangerousLiberal:
Well, I’m taking both this time- and the poli sci books cost just as much- equivalent level of courses- I signed up for a hard poli sci course to help get a job instead of a fluff course. Figured I could afford the GPA hit.
I see your point about the expenditures- I assumed that at first was the reason until I saw some other book prices that my gf at the time had to pay. It was actually worse, but she has no common sense when it comes to finances- I had more ability to look for deals, and a better sense of what profs didn’t use the book (ratemyprofessor.com helped)
I don’t believe in complaining without solution- my solution is that the profs handle this by taking effort to drive down book costs. Otherwise, you are going to see enrollment drops and more students doing worse due to not getting book or infringing the copyright (I am assuming that there is at least a weak positive correlation between having the book and doing well in the class- though there likely be plenty of interaction terms involved as well)
Oh, you got me started. This is one of my personal pet peeves. This semester, I paid $160 for a freshman calculus textbook. The bookstore wanted $200,. but I managed to find it at Amazon Marketplace. Still, it’s ridiculous. You can easily run up a $600 tab for books each and every semester you’re in school, and you’d be lucky to get 10% of that back on resale.
My teachers allow us to use old editions if we can find them, they told us that most new edition are just newer questions at the end of a chapter, or moving of chapters, or sometimes a small error in the answers. (I’m in chemistry). Most of the teachers even go to the trouble of listing the pages for for reading in the older edition as well as posting the “new” questions online for people who don’t have the new book.
an add on:
About the book bundling thing… I bought my chem 101 text separately because at the time I did not have enough money to purchase the combined textbook/study guide/full answer book package. I was leaving that college to go to another one and was going to sell my book back… but because I did not purchase the 250$ package, and bought the 120$ textbook separately, they were only going to give me 20$ for it!
Somebody may have already said this, I didn’t read all the comments.
How about they get the cost of tuition under control first. I just paid $677 for one four credit class… that’s ONE class. That doesn’t even count the $75 parking permit (which I do need, I live <20 miles from campus, no public transport)… or the $50 application fee… or the $55 Acceptance fee. And I don’t live on campus, that would be a couple grand more. And I don’t even go to an “expensive” school
textbooks are a scam.
Seriously…how often does calculus textbooks need to be updated? It’s not like the material is getting stale.
Its worth noting that in Virginia, this is already the law. At public colleges, the campus bookstores are required to tell the prof. how much their order will cost and the prof has to sign that he/she got the information. VA law also has unbundling provisions. Google around for the “textbook market fairness act” and the “textbook market reform act.”
One of my professions said something like this on the first day.
“Our first test is a general intelligence test, raise your hand if you bought your book from the University book store.
You fail, please return your book and order one from half.com, we won’t be using the text for 2 weeks.”
I had three different editions of one of my English books in college. (Withdrew/Withdrew/Completed) and the only difference between them was the ordering of the chapters. The books had the exact same material, they just presented in a different order.
I think they just pushed each chapter forward one, and the last chapter ended up being chapter one each time.
What’s wrong with buying used copies? Or buy new, go photocopy what you need, then return it?
@evslin: I had a finance professor that did the same thing. The US edition was seriously overpriced, most students warned each other not to buy it, but instead get the paperback “International” edition that was about 70% less. Apart from some supplemental information at the end which the prof made handouts of anyway, the international edition was IDENTICAL to the US one, apart from being a paperback. Since the pages were off, he usually had to list the reading assignments for both editions. He couldn’t officially endorse what we did, but he certainly didn’t impede us from doing what we did. Off the record, he thought the book pricing was as insane as we did.
My last two years of school, about 95% of my textbooks were bought from other students, Half.com or Amazon. I got hard up for a book for a stupid anthropology class (most useless course I’ve ever taken) that nobody had the most current version available used and ended up having to shell out the new price for it. I took delight in selling books back to the bookstore that I had bought online for a pittance for 20% more than what I paid for them.
You call yourselves college students? What a whining bunch of wimps!
Back in my day we didn’t buy any pathetic used books or spend hours over a hot xerox, secretly photocopying texts at night in the department office.
Nah, we were real American college students. We followed nerdy drunken upperclassmen as they left the Student Union pub and mugged ‘em for their books. That’s how ya do it.
Youbetcha.
“Instead of assigning two expensive books and using just a few chapters of each, professors should order custom books with only the chapters they intend to assign.”
Making the resale value approximately $2.
I haven’t had very many textbooks since my first two years of college, because at this point most of my classes revolve around primary sources or free online secondary sources.
Honestly by my junior year I stopped buying a lot of the “required” books. A quick glimpse of the syllabus most professors handed out clearly told you which books you needed and which were just supplemental.
And a lot of the classes you could get by without a book just by going to all the lectures.
Not only are the bookstores ripping you off on new books but they are ripping you off on used as well. In the cases where they can actually keep the previous year’s version to sell they buy low sell high.
I remember taking some books back to see how much I would get back. Used versions selling for 80 bucks with their student buyback price being 5 dollars. I actually told a cashier once that the paper in the book would net me more then 5$ using it to wipe my rear instead of toilet paper.
Needless to say I have a bunch of books that I used in college in my bookshelf. Maybe my kids will some day find something interesting in them.
@thelushie: You still don’t have evidence of kickbacks, because you’ve not defined a kickback. Yes, I am bias [sic] because I see things as a prof, but I also understand things from the students’ perspective, which is why I try to keep the costs of the books I assign to a reasonable level. Meanwhile, you, not me, are impugning the integrity of authors, publishers, and professors, on the basis of scant evidence–and the playground taunt. Was I short with you–yes, perhaps, and I apologize. But I was also writing to the broader readership on this blog, a number of which seem to have gone further than you and have confused urban myth with evidence. As a social scientist, you can see why this can be really frustrating.
I can say this: neither I nor my colleagues in the social sciences, based on my recent very unscientific poll (N<10) have taken any incentives (except for some nice pens they have at the booths). Those of us who have written texts do accept royalty payments; I also liberally give away copies of the book when I pay for it. So there–now we have data! Let’s run a t-test!
@Bitmapped: The dollar plus per page figure comes from an Economic Anthropology class I enrolled in at UCI. One of the required texts was a custom job, with scans of the required pages stapled together with a nice official cover page that listed all the copyrights. $70-something, and it was ~50 pages. I’d rather buy the 3-4 books that went into it and sell them back when I’m done with the course. It wasn’t a core class so I just dropped it.
And as I and others have said, custom jobs are worthless when the class is over. Even international editions can fetch most/all of their purchase price when the quarter is over.
My favorite method was when professor put up pdfs of all the required readings, reducing the student cost to 0. The only trouble was one generous professor who made the final open book. *grumble*
@dreamcatcher2: Custom books are probably more okay in-major (where you intend to keep the book) than in survey courses, where resale is a more likely goal.
But seriously, I get a free class every semester I teach, and I really liked my custom book … even though resale was lower. Cheaper than the full text or two half-texts, fit our curriculum better. But virtually all local resale is within the same school, so they’re resellable to the same population unless they change editions.
(I didn’t resell mine, I kept it for reference.)
@Eyebrows McGee:
Except that literary commentary hasn’t advanced. At all.
I’m a fan of the Twain approach to “literary analysis” anyway. The authors who provide an analysis of their own texts are pretentious assholes, while those third-parties who engage in literary analysis are simply assholes.
This immediately leads, of course, to a variety of assertions from literary professors, the most common of which is that of “clarification.” If an author’s intent was not “clear” from the text itself, then the work either has no further analysis beyond what is written on the pages or the author was so inept that their work does not deserve further scrutiny.
Unfortunately, it is largely only the living authors that are capable of defending their works. At least we’ve had such luminaries as Twain, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis to set the critics aright.
The essential point here is these books should not be bothered with, nor should the courses. They’re an unnecessary expense.
The irony here is that my college lit books were some of my most expensive, and yet contained the largest amount of recycled, public-domain text. If you wish to analyze Shakespeare in a class, perhaps it would be best to ask students to purchase a volume of Shakespeare for $10, rather than an irrelevant textbook for $80.
(I’ve frequently failed to understand how these courses are graded, as well. Literary critics will immediately tell you that they are analyzing art, while simultaneously attempting to convince you that they have the only correct understanding of it. Chances are that when everyone thinks they’re right, no one is.)
The crux is this: every professor thinks that his or her subject is the “most important” and that it is most deserving of the newest texts. If they did not engage in such jackassery, this would not be an issue.
The only textbooks which should require yearly updates, save for corrections, are those of the sciences and modern histories. Artistic criticism is opinion, when it is not outright fiction, and one is rarely in need of outside aids when teaching creative writing.