
Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive? - arjn
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/why-are-college-textbooks-so-absurdly-expensive/266801/
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kjackson2012
I'm not generally someone that supports illegal acts, but I fully support
pirating/copying of textbooks. The fact that textbook publishing companies
have a virtual monopoly and then do other things like coerce professors to
continuously force students to use yearly new editions of textbooks makes me
believe that the only solution is to pirate their material and starve them of
money.

Sorry that some good textbook authors are affected by this, but frankly, there
is a bigger issue here, and collateral damage is to be expected. The only
solution is to charge fair prices, and until that point is reached, I believe
students should pirate textbooks to their hearts content.

~~~
maeon3
So your solution is for them to charge fair prices? While we are fixing
prices, I suggest we also fix the prices of DeBeers diamonds to appropriate
market value. Then why stop there? Lets have the government set the prices of
all overpriced commodities, including outrageous salaries. Someone's already
beat you to this idea though, it's called communism.

~~~
kjackson2012
There is no "market" for textbooks. Professors assign a single textbook, and
students are forced to buy it. If a class could somehow allow for different
textbooks would allow students to pay for cheaper textbooks and create price
competition. But it's hard to do in practice if not impossible.

I didn't say they should mandate a fixed price. I said the book publishers
should charge a fair price, one that decreases the amount of pirating because
it's low enough so that it's not worth it for students to pirate. That's up to
them. Until they do, I fully support pirating of textbooks.

~~~
csomar
_Professors assign a single textbook, and students are forced to buy it._

No one put a gun on your head to go to that college. You took this decision
and then you must be responsible for the costs of tuition, housing, books...
Inform yourself well of the college and professors before enrolling too.

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tzs
The publishers will tell you that it is because it is a lot of work to produce
new editions every couple of years to keep the textbook up to date.

I'm pretty sure they are lying, at least as far as that explaining the high
prices. Here is why I believe this:

[http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-
Introduction...](http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-Introduction-
Algebra/dp/0471000051)

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471000078>

These are Apostol's excellent two volume undergraduate calculus textbook.
Volume I is $231.25, and volume II is $189.49.

They were around $22 each when I bought my copies in 1977. I'm sure that NONE
of the subsequent price increase is due to revisions and updates, because
there have been no revisions or updates. Volume I is still the second edition
(from 1967) and volume II is also still the second edition (from 1969). (There
has been no need to revise or update them).

Based on inflation, these books should be about $80-90 per volume now (if we
assume that $22 in 1977 was a reasonable price).

~~~
textminer
Maddening how so many classic textbooks have new versions every few years that
add a few nominal features ("Calculus in the Real World!" "Online Tutorials
That're Worse Than What Someone Else Made on YouTube!") with the real goal of
shuffling around the exercises so a student can't do his or her homework
without having the correct edition. Completely squashes resale markets.

~~~
FuzzyDunlop
Apparently nothing is sacred when it comes to trying to make a quick buck.

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JimEngland
I am really excited to see what companies like Boundless
(<http://boundless.com>) do to disrupt the college textbook market.

Boundless is taking OER resources and syncing it up to the chapters in
existing textbooks, so a student can enter the textbook for the course and get
a customized online replacement.

~~~
mediocregopher
As a college kid who refuses to pay for textbooks: Thanks!

When you go to the site it already knows what school you go to (or at least it
did for me). There's more then one school in my town, so I don't know if they
just do geo-location and go with the larger school, or if they have some other
source (I don't see how or what though). On one hand very cool, on the other a
little worrying.

~~~
JimEngland
They probably have mapped a list of IP address blocks to universities. Pretty
clever :)

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betterunix
I propose an alternative: after some number of years of teaching, professors
get a year off to write textbooks; these books are then distributed under a
creative commons license, with university libraries acting as archives and
hosts for textbooks. Encourage students to share their books with others.

We do not need the textbook publishing industry in this day and age. They have
outlived their usefulness: we can distribute books without them. When their
idea of a "new edition" is to change the problem sets, when their idea of an
electronic edition is "something you cannot read past the end of the year," we
do not benefit in any way from their existence. We are not talking about
entertainment here, we are talking about an important medium for preserving
and propagating human knowledge -- the very thing that has led to the
overwhelming success of human civilization.

~~~
droithomme
> after some number of years of teaching, professors get a year off

That exists, it's called a sabbatical. Teachers are expected to do original
work during their year off, and it often consists of writing books.

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obstacle1
I suspect that many faculty _do_ recognize the issue and _are_ taking steps to
correct it, but are held back by systems put in place by college admins.

Anecdotally, over the course of my program (CS) I paid around $50 per term for
textbooks. The majority of materials we worked from were either open
source/free (e.g. SICP) or canonical texts (e.g. CLRS) available
electronically from the library. That said for each course, there were other
very expensive textbooks listed as required on the syllabus. We'd always get
the "required, yes, _wink wink_ " from profs on the first day of class, with a
strong statement that all of the course material could be gleaned from the
open-source or free resources we'd been given. But yes, the expensive texts
were "required". By someone other than the professor, obviously.

I don't know how common it is for universities (or specific departments) to
have relationships with textbook distributors. But I suspect that's what went
on in the courses I describe. A large publisher makes a deal with the
university, like "all students in {A, B, C ...} courses must be instructed to
purchase Y book from our catalogue", in return for who knows what.

Or maybe I just like conspiratorial thinking.

~~~
aroberge
I've worked at three Canadian universities, including being a senior
administrator at two of them, I've been to meetings with other senior
administrators accross the country ... and I've never heard anything of the
kind. Profs always have the freedom to decide which textbook(s) to
recommend/require - something that is fundamental to Academic freedom.

~~~
pmichaud
I was married to a professor for years, and it's a little more complicated
than that. Full time professors do have some leeway, but they catch shit if
they try to require something "weird," or inconsistent with other professors
teaching similar classes. Adjunct professors have exactly zero say in the
books they teach with, they can't even require extra books (which would be a
sort of workaround).

And consider the trend to hire more and more adjuncts in lieu of full time
faculty.

~~~
aroberge
When I was younger, I really bought in the myth that the U.S. was the country
where true freedom could be found. I can guarantee you that here, in Canada,
even adjuncts (at universities where I worked) have true Academic Freedom when
it comes to choice of books, etc.

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droithomme
When I was in school I'd sell my unwanted books not to the bookstore for 1/30
what I paid, but to a student in the next session of the same class for
80%-90% of what I paid. I advise others do the same whenever possible as it
dramatically reduces the average price paid.

Version churn can work to your advantage. Recently I bought a couple of
previous-edition textbooks on subjects I was interested in. In both cases the
newest edition was over $100 and the previous edition less than $10. The
differences between editions are negligible. Despite this, I realized
reviewing these books that the reason I don't normally do this is that
textbooks are almost universally of utterly abysmal quality and riddled with
errors, superstitions, and nonsense compared to the state of the art knowledge
in any field.

For-pay college and textbooks are a waste of time and money. Stealing
textbooks is pointless and futile as you are doing something illegal, but for
taking something of no real value.

Speaking here as a sometimes college lecturer and teacher.

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gnosis
Interesting that the American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think tank)
is the one coming out with criticism of high textbook prices. Aren't they
supposed to be "pro business"? Shouldn't they be cheering how much profit the
textbook industry is able to squeeze out of consumers?

~~~
nathos
I'm sure they would point to the market-distorting high availability of
(government-backed) loans as a factor in inflated book prices (and tuition,
etc.). And to some degree, they'd be correct.

------
arikrak
Also like in Medicine, the US publishers charge US students much more than
they charge students elsewhere (even in other Western countries). I think part
of the reason they're able to do this is because college itself costs much
more here. When people started importing international books, they started
changing the questions in those books.

That's also how they are able to sell new editions constantly. Many subjects
(math, mechanics, etc.) don't change much, but the publishers come out with
different editions every 2-3 years so people can't just buy used books.

It's a ridiculous system, but hopefully open textbooks and online education
will help change things.

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bitdestroyer
I received my AA at a community college last year and they were beginning to
take an interesting direction when I was leaving that I hope to see other
institutions take.

The college itself was commissioning certain professors (department heads in
some instances I believe) within each department to put together their own
textbooks for certain subjects. When I would go to the bookstore, I remember
seeing books branded with the colleges name rather than your typical textbook
publishers. If I remember correctly, these textbooks were significantly
cheaper, something on the order of ~$30 for an algebra or calculus book (I
can't remember which it was).

Sure, it takes a little bit of work, but in the long run the students save
money and the college may actually stand to make a little (or a lot, I don't
know what, if any, markup is on them) money as well.

I've had professors apologizing to students in pretty much every class I've
taken because of the textbook prices, so they're definitely starting to look
at alternatives. So much so that I've had a couple professors tell us to
return the books.

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Edootjuh
I recently followed a Computer Networking course, and the teachers actually
went though pains to ensure those with older editions could follow the
assigned exercises.

From what I could tell, the differences between the 6th, 5th and 4th editions
were not discernible in the text, only the exercises had changed positions and
had subtle variations in the numbers and wordings. That was my first
experience with the textbook industry. The book, Computer Networking: A Top-
Down Approach by Kurose and Ross was very good, but the obvious abuse of their
monopoly by forcing students to buy the newer editions gave me my first look
into how the textbook industry operates.

Still, I have great respect for my University (Utrecht University in the
Netherlands) for (until now) either using syllabi that can be freely
downloaded or cheaply bought for a hardcopy or accommodating students with
older editions of textbooks.

EDIT: Oh, and I recently found this link: <http://www.textbooknova.com/>.

It's probably not legal, but free textbooks!

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stinger
until we can get publishers to pay heed, students are happily renting books.
Chegg has seen tremendous growth for its rentals.

Also, there are open source books [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chegg-
partners-with-opensta...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chegg-partners-
with-openstax-college-and-20-million-minds-to-provide-open-source-
etextbooks-2013-01-09)

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arjn
And here is the article referenced in the OP : <http://slate.me/VaV0lS>

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hdx
There are very few things I hate, but textbook publishers is certainly one of
them. Really, a Calculus book with material from a century ago costs 150
bucks? And they change the order of the exercises every 2 years so you can't
get a used one? A F#$%^&* hate those mafakas.

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davidglb
Guess it's good timing to mention my startup for college textbooks:
<http://fiftyorless.cloudapp.net>

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zinssmeister
a problem for sure, that's why startups like <http://www.bookrenter.com/> are
turning a nice profit.

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codva
My son's Spanish book this semester is a special edition - Googling the ISBN
brings up only the school bookstore. $175, but that does include the web
access code for online stuff. What a bargain! Luckily we were able to score
all the books for his other 4 classes for about $130 at Amazon, so I guess
$300 for the semester really is not that bad.

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arjn
Perhaps there is a good chance here to organize a collaborative effort to
write open-source (free) textbooks from scratch.

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Shari460
Please contact me! I am a student fighting for what is fair!! Shari merkle
shari30@aol.com

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batgaijin
olly olly oxen free, show thyself oligopoly!

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maeon3
The solution is simple:

Make sure Colleges have to pay for half of the price of student books and put
that cost into Tuition. That way when students measure the inflated tuition
prices (due to lots of $400 books), they go with the other college that has
book prices that are reasonable.

Colleges trying to increase enrollment will discover that switching to a non
corrupt book seller will be in everyone's best interests. Free market will
thus be restored and prices will float according to their value, rather than
by authoritative fiat.

