August 29th, 2008
If Gas Prices Aren’t Leaving You Broke, Textbook Prices Might
Listen closely. You can almost hear the collective groans and gasps coming from your local college bookstore. Like an autumnal bloom, the debate over the pricing of textbooks reopens each year with the ritual of bookstore sticker shock. How bad is it? A study by the Department of Education, as quoted by The Business Shrink, reports a 6 percent rise–an increase of nearly 186 percent since 1986.
Who is to blame?
A lot of the blame is laid at the feet of publishers. Whether fairly or not, it seems that we have come to expect them to function like non-profit organizations. In reality, they are beholden to share prices, carry huge overhead, and assume a major financial risk with every first edition. As economist and author Greg Mankiw noted in his blog, free examination copies also get into the system and they, along with used and foreign copies, actually drive up the average cost of each book–meaning the full cost of production increasingly needs to be recouped with first semester sales. If the only culprit was the publishing companies, they’d be making outlandish profits (big oil, anyone?).
Still, many people feel there is something truly nefarious in the peddling of big-ticket multimedia supplements as well as the practice of hairpin revision cycles. And, when enough people get concerned, Congress gets involved.
College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008
Just over a week ago, Higher Ed Watch, among others, reported on the passage of a Higher Education Act into law. Tucked into the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008, a summary of which can be found at govtrack.us, is an attempt to deal with the ballooning cost of textbooks. Basically, it does three things:
- Gives more information on pricing, revision cycles, and alternatives to professors and others selecting the books.
- “Unbundles” textbook packages, allowing students to choose what supplements (CDs, workbooks, etc.) to buy.
- Gets textbook information into students’ hands with course schedules, giving them time to seek out alternatives to traditional texts.
What is your real alternative as a student? Get educated on your choices. In addition to used books, cheaper options exist in the form of foreign editions, digital texts, and audio downloads. Some students, according to the Jeannette Rankin Foundation, are even calling for an increased use of open textbooks or textbook rentals from their colleges.
As an English lecturer at a mid-size university, I get to share the middle ground between the students and the book publishers.
I have one short comment about examination copies. During the past three years, I have probably received nearly 50 “free” examination copies of texts that I did not request. Publisher representatives should exercise more control over what texts they ship to faculty members. It’s like playing the lottery with book selection–they send it to a faculty member and hope that faculty member selects the book.
As for textbooks…this semester, I worked very closely with the book publisher to keep textbook costs low. We selected a package that I thought was affordable (roughly $50 for two books). I was stunned when I looked at the prices at the bookstore–the package had been marked up to nearly $80.
I spoke to our bookstore assistant and he said the standard mark-up for textbooks was 33%. I’m not sure what the bookstore mark-up has been in past years, but it seems as though prices are getting more and more expensive.
A major issue is the lack of competition–not between publishers (which already exists)–but for local campus bookstores. There’s no reason that college bookstores shouldn’t mark-up their texts as much as they want–because in most cases, they don’t have any competition. It’s like paying $6.25 for a drink at the movie theater–what other options are available?
Students should spend time researching the required books for each class and look for discount retailers online. I told my students this semester to look for previous versions of our writing manual and pointed them in the direction of reputable booksellers to purchase their reader for the semester at a lower price.
I’m not sure where the textbook pricing issue will go in the future, but if things are not rectified in the next few years, it is conceivable that students may not be able to afford their textbooks after tuition and living costs eat up their checkbooks and credit cards.
Comment by Michael — August 29, 2008 @ 12:10 pm