
How California campuses are fixing the problem of pricey college books - palidanx
https://www.scpr.org/news/2018/02/15/80805/here-s-how-california-campuses-are-fixing-the-prob/
======
mitchdoogle
Some tips for textbooks I wish I knew when I started college:

1\. Wait until classes start to buy textbooks. You want to have a chance to
talk to your actual professor and hear what they say about the textbook and/or
look at the syllabus to determine what, if any, readings are actually required
from the textbook. In many cases, textbooks are chosen at a departmental
level, so some professors may use them sparingly or not at all.

2\. If you determine that the textbook is probably needed for you to finish
the course, and there is an older edition available less than 5 years old,
then buy the older edition. It will be available online on eBay, Amazon, etc.
for a much cheaper price than the most current edition. In most cases, the
reading content will be very similar, if not identical. Problems sets might
change, but if you are assigned them, you can ask another student to take a
look at their textbook, or borrow one from the school library. I started doing
this my last couple of years at college, and never had any issues.

3\. If you do buy a textbook, read it in its entirety. Remember that you are
taking classes to _learn_ , not to blindly follow a course syllabus. So read
your textbook - all of it - even the parts that aren't assigned.

~~~
tartuffe78
4\. Digital copies are often available online for free.

~~~
zanny
Students should feel absolutely no guilt in pirating textbooks. The whole
industry is a racket, designed to exploit kids in a situtation where they have
no choice. I did things the "normal" way my first year of college back in the
day and realized how stupid paying $400 a semester in books was before I just
nabbed pdfs (and finding them was a challenge in the days before The Book Bay
was a thing).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Students should feel absolutely no guilt in pirating textbooks.

False.

> The whole industry is a racket, designed to exploit kids in a situtation
> where they have no choice.

True. But your previous sentence does not follow from this. The bad actions of
others do not justify your own bad actions, no matter how tempting it becomes
to think otherwise.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_The bad actions of others do not justify your own bad actions, no matter how
tempting it becomes to think otherwise._

Dunno. 15 years ago all the Ivy League libraries campaigned against Elsevier's
pricing and achieved precisely nothing. We had to wait for Scihub.

------
jccalhoun
This is a bad article. Renting textbooks is not unique. As others have said,
schools have typically sold books and bought them back at the end of the
semester. (Of course when they come out with a new version you were stuck with
it)

Textbook companies are pushing electronic books hard. They say that they have
studies showing students learn more because it is interactive and such. I am
skeptical though and think it is mostly so they can sell a license to the
material and kill off used book sales. Sure it costs less but there is no way
to make any money off of selling it and some companies only allow you to
access it for a year or so and so even if you wanted to access it later in
life you can't (I think there are some that offer lifetime access but that is
really lifetime of the software platform).

The real cost savings is Open Educational Resources (OER). Basically Creative
Commons books that are free for students and educators with no drm.
[https://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/07/02/16-oer-
site...](https://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/07/02/16-oer-sites-every-
educator-should-know.aspx)

~~~
joe_the_user
Indeed,

I don't know if this passage was meant to fool me but it fooled me: _By one
estimate, college students nationwide spent $701 each year on textbooks in
2008. By 2017 that cost dropped by more than $100._ \- Which I initially read
as "to $100", which, unlike a $100 drop, is impressive.

$100 _drop_ is a speed bump and if they can only manage such a speed bump, the
whole thing is like a press release.

~~~
jogjayr
I think it's impressive that _any_ college expense has come down at all.

Also you're not taking into account the fact that inflation alone should have
increased costs by roughly $100 since 2008. But instead there's a net
decrease.

~~~
jjeaff
Looks to me like they are not calculating the net cost. Since they don't
mention selling back and all and then attribute some of the fall in price to
rentals.

Most people would come out farther ahead buying on Amazon and then selling
back after the semester. Rather than rent.

If their calculations do not include selling the book back, my guess is
students are actually spending less up front but spending more overall.

------
yequalsx
I teach math at a community college. The courses we teach cover content that
hasn’t meaningfully changed in a long time yet textbooks change frequently.
About 10 years ago I decided that I would never require paid content for my
courses. I make my own problems sets and lectures. I use lectures on YouTube
and where possible free, open source textbooks.

The publishers got too greedy. Their websites all suck. Their lectures are
generally terrible. Their books sneak in ads. There is nothing user friendly
about that industry. I hope it withers and dies and gets replaced by something
more palatable.

~~~
rectang
Are there no appropriate open textbooks available in electronic form for your
courses?

~~~
yequalsx
There is an excellent College Algerva I and College Algebra II open source
textbook. It’s very high quality. There is a passable Calculus I and Calculus
II open source textbook. I haven’t found any other high quality opens source
textbooks for the math courses I teach. Hence I create my own lectures and
problem sets.

[http://www.stitz-zeager.com](http://www.stitz-zeager.com) open source pre-
calculus

------
wand3r
> By one estimate, college students nationwide spent $701 each year on
> textbooks in 2008. By 2017 that cost dropped by more than $100.

The reason for this is piracy. People save money pirating books and it also
provides competition to what was a formerly the extortionist monopolistic
practices of publishers.

~~~
wlesieutre
I took a class where the book was hundreds of dollars, only used for homework
problems and nobody could find a PDF. One of the students bought it, "scanned"
every page with their camera, and returned it. Piracy is definitely how
students are saving money on books.

~~~
nickparker
I've come dangerously close to starting a shadowy organization at my
university for the sole purpose of maintaining and operating a couple DIY book
scanners.

------
fabian2k
The fundamental problem is that the people selecting the books aren't the ones
paying for them in US colleges. There isn't much incentive to choose cheaper
books.

But that seems to be mostly because courses require very specific books, which
certainly could be changed. My experience in Germany was very different, for
almost all courses there were no required textbooks, only recommended ones.
You were free to buy them, don't buy them, buy different ones or rent books
from the library. And the prices are much lower, the most expensive textbook I
bought was 80 EUR.

~~~
veddox
Coming from Germany, I find it hard to understand the scope of the problem
described in the article. In my course, less than half the students bought any
textbook at all during their entire bachelor's program. The professors made
almost all their lecture notes available online and if you needed a textbook,
there were plenty stocked in the library.

~~~
Cynddl
Same in France. I've never bought a single textbook, as we either had to take
notes during classes, or study documents printed by professors for us. Many
professors would actually either write handouts notes, or ask student at some
point to write one and would let anyone download it the years after.

They sometimes recommended books for us, that were sold for 30-40 € in any
library.

------
wccrawford
>A new copy of the textbook for Intermediate Accounting II sells for $373.25,
but the same book can be rented for the semester for $149.30. Students can
write on and highlight rented books. The bookstore also sells cheaper
electronic copies.

My community college did this 25 years ago. Though they "sold" us used books
at a huge discount, and then paid us a portion of that when we sold them back.
In the end, it was basically a "rental" but if you screwed up the book, you
didn't get as much for it.

~~~
dalbasal
The ridiculous part is that accounting II is a course taken by a huge number
of students. This isn't a small run problem.

The actual solution to all this is to have universities pay for books. They
can shop more diligently, roll their own, use out of date books, go digital...
Lots of options that are open to the college, but not the student.

When the decision maker is not the user, price systems fail.

~~~
SilasX
That's exactly how they do it in public schools before college: the school
buys the book and you get to use it for the duration of the course. Oh, and
you have to get a book cover (in some districts) to protect it from damage.

------
eykanal
So, we're willing to introduce legislation to bring a $700 textbook bill down
to $600, but ignore the fact that tuition is over $50,000 in many
institutions. I guess we can call this a small win, but my goodness, that is a
small win indeed.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> but ignore the fact that tuition is over $50,000 in many institutions_

These textbook prices do matter! If you're paying 1k in textbook fees and
8k-9k in tuition, then those books are eating up a significant percentage of
your total burn.

9k is not a made-up number, by the way. Public colleges and universities
without active research programs have tuition in the ~9k range [1]. Which is
still a lot, but a student who works a part-time job and lives at home can get
out with relatively little debt (or even no debt with a modest scholarship and
impressive work ethic).

You don't have to go to Harvard or even the state flagship. And you definitely
don't need to go to one of the many second-rate schools that charge Harvard
prices for access to a much less prestigious network and in many cases
inferior education.

If a student attends a school with an active research program and chooses not
to leverage that expertise in order to level up their career prospects, then
that student made a bad decision. Perhaps we should be doing more to shield
people from bad life choices, or at least not enable those choices with easy
access to huge piles of debt. But in most states, there do exist (more)
reasonable options in the current market.

IMO we should be moving to self-published open source books, with hard copies
sold in the 20-50 dollar price range and with all profits going to the actual
author. The online auto-graded homework assignments are an unsolved problem
for some courses, but that's nothing a sabbatical or two can't solve.

[1] [https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-
pricing/highlights](https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-
pricing/highlights)

~~~
ivan_ah
"Pay the authors" is a really good strategy to incentivize the production of
quality content. Get rid of the publishers and just have a short supply chain:
author --print_on_demand--> readers. With a price tag in the 20-50 range, a
prof could make a living from this book, even if the book isn't popular. When
using print-on-demand and cutting out all the middlemen, the margins are very
good (50% of list price vs 5% if going with mainstream publisher).

The useful part of a publisher is developmental editing (product) and copy
editing (Q/A), so there is an opportunity for "lightweight" publishing
companies that help expert authors produce the book—like self publishing, but
you don't have to do the boring parts. I'm working in that space. We have two
textbooks out:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0992001005/noBSmathphys](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0992001005/noBSmathphys)
and
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0992001021/noBSLA](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0992001021/noBSLA)

------
mixmastamyk
Anything to kill the textbook cartel, in league with the campus bookstore. I’m
reminded of a brand new Calculus textbook that was mandatory, though the
subject has been intact for centuries.

Luckily the internet gives so many options to combat this, but would still
appreciate open source textbooks.

~~~
refurb
This is so true. On thing I used to do is just buy the previous edition for
less than $10. Content was 99% the same, but pages _sometimes_ differed.

If the textbook is just a reference and not being used for exercises, then it
worked most of the time.

------
tzs
Another tip: if you buy a new copy, consider an international edition if it is
available.

For example, suppose your calculus class uses Apostol's "Calculus". You can
buy the US edition, which is an utterly ridiculous $270 on Amazon at the
moment, and that's just for volume 1! Volume 2 is similarly priced.

(It's particularly ridiculous because today's edition of Apostol is still the
2nd edition, from the 1960s. At least with those calculus books that they make
gratuitous changes to each year to discourage use of used books, they can at
least try to claim that the price keeps going up because they keep doing
things to the book).

The international edition, which is exactly the same _content_ as the US
edition, but in paperback instead of hardback, and on thinner paper, is around
$20 [1] per volume from numerous small booksellers. There's even a couple that
are Prime and fulfilled by Amazon.

(I've heard that for some textbooks, the US edition uses color and the
international edition is only black & white. For Apostol the US edition is
black & white so it does not matter, but if you are considering a book that is
in color keep this in mind).

If Amazon does not have the international edition, try AbeBooks.com. It is far
more likely that AbeBooks will have a seller with it than Amazon, actually.

Similar to AbeBooks.com is Biblio.com. Occasionally one will have a textbook
that the other does not.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/8126515198](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/8126515198)

~~~
ct0
Some Universities will have an edition that puts their name on the cover, with
a unique ISBN. If you look through the first few pages, it may be possible to
find the original ISBN number from book the content came from and buy that for
a significant savings.

------
jimmywanger
FTA: "A new copy of the textbook for Intermediate Accounting II sells for
$373.25, but the same book can be rented for the semester for $149.30."

I'm pretty sure that the basic principles of Intermediate Accounting haven't
changed for decades. Any recent changes are industry specific and you sort of
pick up as you go along professionally.

That's especially unconscionable when it's subjects like basic physics,
chemistry, and math. Why do we have to use the latest edition linear algebra
textbook, when you can get older editions for pennies on the dollar? All they
do is change up the pages and switch the problems out.

~~~
MikeTheGreat
I think that 'bio, chem, and math' haven't changed is the stronger argument to
make here - accounting is a bit different.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act happened in 2002 (1.5 decades ago) and Trump & the
Republicans just made some major changes to the tax code (which accountants
need to understand).

Moreover, even though Accounting is taught in college it's really job prep
(like teaching Law to lawyers). You don't need to cover all the details in
your first Accounting 101 class, but you gotta be current on the stuff you do
cover.

Also - just to be clear on where I stand - I think that more than $50 for a
textbook is outrageous. Personally, I think $20-30 should be more than enough.

So it seems like the issue is: Given that we want to (and need to) update the
books, how can we keep prices down?

Open Education Resources (OER), anyone?

~~~
jimmywanger
Well, bio changes every single month seems like but the basic stuff stays the
same in any field like accounting.

Changes in the tax code and the SO act are pieces of litigation that may or
may not affect you. SO in particular is less concerned with basic accounting
and more systems of control, disclosure, and investigations of conflicts of
interest. You only do that in positions of power, because you have to set up
and enforce all those systems.

But for tax code changes, you need to figure out amortization schedules,
accurate cost basis per unit sold and book reconciliation. Those things
haven't really changed for decades, maybe hundreds of years.

------
pitaa
Accessing the material is becoming less and less of a problem, for all the
reasons already stated - piracy, international editions, OER, etc. The real
issue is that the textbook publishers know this and are pushing more and more
access codes so it doesn't matter where you get the book, you still have to
shell out $100 to be able to submit homework. I still haven't seen a good
solution for this issue.

~~~
dingo_bat
Why would you need a textbook code to submit homework? As long as I can read
the text of the book (that I pirated), why can't I solve the homework and
submit it to my school?

~~~
pitaa
Some classes don't accept paper homework these days, everything is completed
online- The textbook publishers have started selling access codes to online
homework websites. So s physics professor might decide to use
"MasteringPhysics" for all the homework in their class, so every student has
to pay ~$100 for a access code (subscription) to that website.

The professors that use these systems like them because they don't have to
grade anything. The departments like them because they don't have to pay
graders and can have bigger classes. An the publishers LOVE them because
students have no choice but to pay.

~~~
dingo_bat
This is making me sick. Seriously horrible.

------
njarboe
Since at least some university professors should be able to write a good
textbook on the subject they teach, the university should give them a semester
or two off of teaching classes to write one, give the professor a little
royalty ($1/book?), and then publish and sell the book at cost. $15 to $30 per
book. Then don't change it until necessary (calculus could be the exact same
book for decades) so that even cheaper used books are plentiful. Many
universities even already run their own publishing houses.

I'm not sure where the friction is that prevents this from happening?
University presidents like to have fancy dinners with textbook publishing
house CEOs?

~~~
wedowhatwedo
That's good in theory, but what currently happens is a professor takes a fully
paid sabbatical and writes the book for a publishing company. That company
sells the book to students for $300 a copy and pays the professor $50 a copy
(with a possible sizable amount up front). The professor and friends of the
professor requires it for their classes.

The friction that prevents your plan from happening is that the professors
won't do it for so cheap. There is a ton of money they can make under the
current system.

~~~
walterbell
Can the University press offer a similar deal to their employee/professor,
undercut the commercial publisher, save the student money and still profit?

~~~
wedowhatwedo
It's possible but what happens often now is the professor is getting paid
twice. Paid sabbatical and bonus money for the book. If the University was
doing it, they wouldn't pay a person twice for one job. At least that's how my
university would view it. Also, I'm not sure if a professor gets much credit
from the University toward tenure for writing a book. Because of this, if
there is no money involved, I doubt many professor's would do it. They do it
for the money only right now.

------
jfoutz
I don't understand why open textbooks aren't more common. Sure, some things
are changing quickly, but a calc or linear algebra? Seems like a quality book
(or a couple) could be made for lots of courses. Most schools have a print
shop and can do binding. $30 bucks maybe, if you want a hard copy?

~~~
coolspot
Don’t teachers get rewarded for requiring latest edition of expensive
textbook?

~~~
HarryHirsch
No. What gives you the idea, one would think that most people on this forum
have seen a university from the inside.

~~~
coolspot
Because they fanatically demand latest edition of expensive book, which has
minor changes from previous edition.

I mean, how much editions of well established math book you could do? Every
year new one.

------
astura
Not mentioned here: My college had many textbooks on reserve in the library.
You'd check it out for two hours. I didn't buy books for a lot of classes
because I just used the reserve copy when I needed it.

------
electricslpnsld
Fun trick: grab the international editions. They are usually soft-cover, and
the practice problems are often renumbered so you have to find a friend with
the US edition, but they are often 1/10 of the cost of the US editions.

~~~
jstarfish
I did this all throughout college. I never found them to be different in
content in any way, so ESID I guess.

------
snomad
This is all just fluff PR. Follett's continues to have a near monopoly on
campus book stores and Pearson has outsized influence given demonstrated
(in)competence.

Want cheaper prices? Cut those 2 out, put out more public bids for service, or
_gasp_ if you are a 23 campus university system maybe negotiate on behalf of
all 23 campuses instead of 1 by 1. Microsoft gave umbrella rates for all of
the CSU system, so why not ask publishers to do the same?

------
Myrmornis
Virtually all textbooks are available as pirated copies for free on library
genesis. Of course it may be illegal in your jurisdiction to download them. So
in a sense this problem is currently fixed, if your ISP allows access to
libgen and if you are not worried about the consequences.

~~~
dredmorbius
Tor is an option.

------
HarryHirsch
If a campus were serious about textbook prices they would set up a LON-CAPA
server ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LON-
CAPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LON-CAPA)) and employ a dedicated
instructional faculty member to maintain the questions database. What students
are really paying for is the online homework (the Canada-based Top Hat is a
venture-capital based upstart, otherwise each publisher has their own system)
because faculty are just too overworked with grading the stuff.

Politically it's easier to shift the burden to the students (and mandatory
homework doesn't even count as tuition) than finding funding for the Loncapa
maintenance man or the teaching assistant that helps grade the stuff.

------
keithpeter
[https://openstax.org/subjects](https://openstax.org/subjects)

What do US students and teachers think about openstax? I've made use of short
excerpts of some chapters as extra content in my own teaching (UK, not
university level)

------
sizzzzlerz
I'm a long time out of college but even back then, textbooks were hugely
expensive. One trick my school had was the EE/EL club ran their own used book
store. We'd buy books at the end of a term and resell them next term for a
small profit. Students who sold and/or bought got a great deal and we made
money for out club to pay for activities.

------
Animats
_A new copy of the textbook for Intermediate Accounting II sells for $373.25_

Looking at the prices for accounting books on Amazon, there are two kinds -
books for people who need to do accounting for a business, which sell for
about $20, and textbooks, which sell for $100-$300. Most of the textbooks come
from Wiley or McGraw-Hill.

------
vkou
... Here's some crazy ideas for how to deal with the problem of pricey college
books.

1\. Stop requiring the latest edition for a class. I strongly doubt that the
science behind Physics 201 has changed in the past two years - you can
probably teach to the 2008 edition of the textbook, instead of the 2018.

2\. Stop requiring textbooks containing one-time digital codes.

~~~
munk-a
3\. Stop allowing professors to require their own book as a source for the
class. It provides a terrible incentive.

------
wyld_one
Set up digital books for content.

Prohibit/censure teachers for 'requiring' books they wrote when they were
never used in class.

------
pacetherace
Universities should be ranked on based Availablity of Textbooks (i.e.
essential for courses offered) as well. It is not uncommon for a University
library to claim that they have a gazillion books but when you go to find a
course textbook, they have like 3 copies of those.

Universities will do anything for the rankings.

------
Skunkleton
The fundamental issue w/ college prices probably comes down to 1) lack of
state/federal funding for institutions, 2) availability of student loans, and
3) lack of good jobs for people without degrees. What is being done to address
the fundamental problems?

------
rdm_blackhole
How about the Netflix of textbooks, pay 30-50$ a month and access all the
textbooks on demand?

The rise of Netflix has almost ended the piracy of movies, the same would
happen for textbooks if this service was created.

