
College Textbook Prices: Out of Control - nswanberg
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2014/03/textbooks-prices-out-of-control-and.html
======
habosa
The absolute worst thing is "course packs" that some of my classes have. These
are PDFs from something like Harvard Business Review that we have to pay for.
It's about ~$60 for the digital set, and half the time once I get it I
realized I could have found half of the PDFs online for free. Every student
has to buy them. In some classes they won't distribute the digital copies so
you have to pay even more to go to the insanely corrupt "Campus Copy Center"
(private business) and get a printed copy of the same shit everyone else got
loosely bound together for $100.

</rant>

~~~
dopamean
I went to Penn and this sounds terribly familiar

~~~
habosa
I also go to Penn, I think most Penn students have this experience a few
times.

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ciclista
I'm currently taking some classes at my community college.

Besides the insane prices, one things I've noticed is that students don't get
their student aid paid out until weeks into the semester, so you either have
the choice to buy books at incredibly high prices at the college bookstore
(higher even brand new compared to Amazon), or you have to wait 6 weeks before
the aid is available for students to shop elsewhere.

Sneaky business.

~~~
danielford
I teach at a community college, and as it was explained to me by our financial
aid office, student aid isn't paid out until a few weeks in as a mechanism to
prevent financial aid fraud. Every year people sign up for classes, collecting
their financial aid money, and then never show up. Community colleges are the
primary target for this type of fraud, since we have open admissions.

The federal government is not okay with this, so they instituted a system of
mandatory reporting where we have to keep track of whether or not a student
shows up during the first few weeks. That way they know who not to send aid to
when that time is up. If we fail to properly report this then the college is
expected to send money to the federal government to make up the difference.

So it's not a trick on our part to get you to use the campus bookstore. I
personally encourage my students not to use the bookstore, since I think
marking up the prices on textbooks is inappropriate. I've also pushed hard for
the adoption of open textbooks in my department, but it looks like that's
going to be at least two years away.

------
mjn
Other discussion of the same post that's also on the front page, with more
comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452231)

(Looks like HN doesn't canonicalize all the blogspot.tld URLs.)

------
astrodust
Textbooks are insultingly expensive. Why is it a student's first lesson on
copyright law is having to choose between a legitimate copy of a textbook at a
sky-high price while eating ramen noodles, or getting a pirated copy and
living large?

Then there's the paper publishing racket which is just as perverse.

This whole system needs to be disrupted so hard nobody even recognizes it.

~~~
ivan_ah
We're recognizing, we're recognizing:
[http://minireference.com/](http://minireference.com/) ;)

Part of the issue is that there are many moving parts in the value chain:
students, profs, authors, publishers, distributors, and bookstores. The
exploitation has persisted mainly because the decision maker in the sales
process is not the client! Mainstream publishers are milking this fact as much
as they possibly can. Insultingly so, you're right. The main problem is that
schools and universities are incredibly slow to adapt so the racket continues,
but with students taking textbook decisions into their own hands things will
change.

I'm optimistic that within the next couple of years, the $130 price tags will
be a thing of the past. The market says so.

~~~
brownbat
As long as professors are allowed to write textbooks, others in their
department will be pressured to require them. Every given textbook will have
several coauthors at different schools, each contributing a chapter, making
the book required for students spread across the country.

Ordinarily I'd put my bet on market forces, and I really hope you're right...
This is so much closer to monopolistic extortion though, I don't see it
changing without lawsuits, regulation, or large donations to University
presidents contingent on new textbook policies.

~~~
bunderbunder
The last option is intriguing. Just reorganizing things so that textbooks are
covered by tuition and have to be paid for out of departmental budgets could
dramatically change the situation overnight.

------
ivan_ah
In case you missed it, here's the blueprint for a DepartmentPress revenue
model for universities:

> _I am trying to get my [[colleagues from the]] department to create an
> introductory meteorology textbook. > A pretty decent online book could be
> written ... we could charge $30 for it > and use the money for an
> undergraduate scholarship._

$20 sale price - $10 printing = $10 profit x 300 students = $3000 / semester

We're not braking the bank with these profits, but at least first-year
undergraduates will save $100/course/semester, which is money they will use
for beer instead.

~~~
tylerritchie
Realistically, it's money they'll use to buy the Stewart's Calculus ($200) [1]
(which, let's be clear, is covering 350 year old subject matter). And then
they'll use their financial aid to buy beer.

All of these intro texts (at $150-$200) are broken. They do not go into the
subject matter deep enough to use as reference later in coursework or a career
and their too expensive to disseminate knowledge widely. Realistically at $30
it's still too expensive to compete with free. But until annotation and
referencing UX catches up for e-books dead-tree books still win for learning
(I know people manage with PDFs and annotation, but I haven't had success with
e-books for anything except for recreational reading). And I think there is a
hurdle that is difficult to get over with getting other universities to adopt
a university press book from a different university especially for an
introductory text.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-James-
Stewart/dp/0538497815/](http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-James-
Stewart/dp/0538497815/)

~~~
erichurkman
Even worse is when the intro classes mandate the book, only for the professor
to not use it because the book is so weak and useless. $150 paperweight that
can't be resold to the used book store because they come out with a new
edition every year.

------
piyushpr134
In India, at least at IITs, we get assignments and course material on email or
as hardcopy kept at campus photocopy centre from where students can get copies
at cheap rates. We hardly bought textbooks. The once we bought were very
cheap. I think the most expensive one I bought was for $8 at current rates.
Don't you guys have libraries ? Whenever I needed to consult a textbook I used
to go to the library and read it there.

Moreover we get "Indian" edition of those books which are written by Americans
and those used to be as cheap as Indian author text books.

On flipkart (Indian version of amazon) Introduction to algorithm is for INR621
which is roughly $10

[http://www.flipkart.com/introduction-
algorithms-3rd/p/itmczy...](http://www.flipkart.com/introduction-
algorithms-3rd/p/itmczynzhyhxv2gs?pid=9788120340077&otracker=from-
search&srno=t_1&query=introduction+to+algorithm+by+cormen&ref=ba0109ca-7953-4a7a-a5fd-30cfe69e59c9)

On amazon same is at $60

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0262033844/ref=sr_1_1...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0262033844/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1395603005&sr=8-1&keywords=introduction+to+algorithms&condition=new)

~~~
XaspR8d
When more than a student or two has the idea of using the library's copy, it
becomes a battle over who will be able to check out the limited number of
copies. Sometimes this becomes serious enough that the library will freeze the
availability of a book if it's been assigned that semester.

Obviously there is something to be learned about the price differences in the
different versions, but there is also a non-trivial difference in quality.
I've had International Versions that were missing whole 10-page sequences,
pages out of order, and different problem sets whose answers had factual
errors. Also the lower grade paper is an obstacle to book reuse.

By this I don't mean to be negative, I just believe the final answer involves
more reasonable digital distribution; I'm sick of the myth of "getting the
exact same book for cheaper" because I've been burned by it a number of times.

~~~
piyushpr134
umm...never had any such issue with my books. May be I was lucky :)

------
SixSigma
Crazy, all the reading list on my course are provided as pdf to the students
and included as part of the course fees. Maybe that's one of the reasons it
was voted UK University of the Year, 2013.

~~~
tfgg
My UK experience on a science course was that any mentioned books were highly
optional and all course material was available for free on the internal
network: lecture notes, slides and question sheets. Any reading material was
only a suggestion, and available in the libraries anyway. Courses where you
had to get books, e.g. history, the texts were in libraries. There was even a
slight kerfuffle when the only way to get notes for one of the lecture courses
was to buy their book, rather than giving them away as PDF as was normal. The
idea of being forced to spend hundreds of £s on textbooks is crazy.

~~~
EliRivers
Likewise. The professor/lecturer taught the material in the class, with spoken
word and blackboard scrawlings, with some paper handouts for the occasional
supplement and for question papers. Recommended books were for those who
wanted to go deeper in a particular area and were available for loan in the
library and were very much indicated as so; you could pass every exam with no
more than notes taken in class.

The idea that a book would be necessary for a class that a teacher should be
teaching seems crazy.

~~~
SixSigma
Not only that the book is necessary but the person not delivering the
necessary material sells the book that contains it.

------
drags
It doesn't fix the "custom book" problem, but if you're an instructor you
should encourage your institution/bookstore to mandate price comparison for
textbooks.

We run white-labelled price comparison sites for about 350 campuses, and the
stores at those campuses end up winning 80% of the sales. The need to look
competitive against online retailers is a really powerful incentive for the
local store to do everything possible to get lower-cost options on the shelves
(and we do things like help them get more used/rental books, lower prices
strategically, etc).

Here's our website, shoot me an email if you're curious:
[http://www.verbasoftware.com](http://www.verbasoftware.com)

~~~
christiangenco
I love verbasoft! It's like a university-sponsored price comparison site. I
believe the model is that instead of having a central university bookstore
that sells the canon copy, students are directed to a site like
[http://davis.verbacompare.com/](http://davis.verbacompare.com/) that shows
textbook prices on Amazon, Albris, Half.com, and a few others.

For students at universities that haven't yet partnered with verbasoft, I made
a textbook search engine in college that does essentially the same thing:
[http://textbooksplease.com](http://textbooksplease.com)

------
ibrad
None of the books I bought in school can be sold. The class requires the
latest edition, and the homeworks are just slightly different. You are force
to buy new ones every semester, and the window for selling it back is getting
smaller and smaller.

------
jrs235
I'm very happy I went to a University that had text book rental. When I was in
school it was $7 per credit. So taking a full 16 credit load would cost $112
per semester for text books. Regardless of if the course used one, ten, or no
books the fee was included. So I paid $7 for text book rental for water polo
(1 credit "class" with no books), $21 for an upper level CS course with
perhaps 1 book, and $21 for an English class that may have required reading 10
books. We never had to deal with selling the books back since we never bought
or owned the books. If after a course, particularly a course in your major, if
you wished to keep the book you could by paying for it.

EDIT: I have heard that most people would spend $112 on a single course, let
alone even a single book. I don't think the publishers and text book companies
really like(d) my University. Yes, this is in the U.S. too. I think if a
school's student body comes together and "demands" text book rental they can
get it. Talk to your student council and apply pressure on the staff and
faculty to incorporate it.

------
kpapke
These guys just got a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. They let you rent
textbooks for $5 a day.
[http://www.packbackbooks.com/](http://www.packbackbooks.com/)

When I was in college, I figured out the textbook scheme by my second
semester. We would buy expensive books and next semester the bookstore
wouldn't buy them back because they were "outdated editions."

So every year after that, I never bought any textbooks. I would either find
the professor's powerpoints online, or make a friend who did buy it and make
copies of their book. If I absolutely needed a book I would rent it from Chegg
or buy used off Amazon, but now Pack Back books looks like an even better
solution.

------
joshmn
I didn't go to school for more than a semester, but I can vouch for this
system: piracy.

I found all my books available without a hitch.

The publishers don't lose out on any money, so I don't feel too bad. I
wouldn't have bought the books otherwise.

~~~
dnautics
I think most of the HN crowd is too old to have experienced this, but even
worse are "course textbook access codes" that some schools require students to
buy a stupid token that locks them into a high price regardless of whether or
not the purchased unit is used, new, or pirated. This especially goes on at
certain lower-tier institutions like cc's, FPUs, etc.

Several of my younger friends in the 20s or going to continuing ed have
reported on this phenomenon.

~~~
joshmn
I can vouch for those access codes. Until there's some sort of bulletproof DRM
(that negates even taking screenshots), there will always be the availability
of pirating any sort of print-based media.

You can't get a search function with that hard-cover stuff.

------
dhekir
In France, the universities and engineering schools I know use _polycopiés_ ,
which are teacher-made, paperback bound books (sometimes actual LaTeX-
formatted text, sometimes just printed versions of course slides), given to
students freely or priced according to their actual printing cost (in average,
200 pages long, ~5€).

Granted, sometimes the quality is not as good as that of a rich textbook, but
it is usually sufficient for the course. And much lighter to carry around as
well.

Besides, the university library contains a small amount of textbooks, which is
usually sufficient for those few interested students which want to learn more.

------
ZanyProgrammer
Its entirely possible at a community college to pay more for books than
tuition.

------
bsgreenb
The author left out one major reason textbooks are so expensive-- course
adoption lists (i.e. which books go with which courses) are kept private or
disorganized so that students or businesses can't offer rival "Search by
Course" type sites without scraping the local bookstore. As a result students
go to the bookstore which knows their requirements unlike Amazon.com.

I open sourced a course data scraper a while ago to help solve this problem:
[https://github.com/bsgreenb/Open-Textbooks](https://github.com/bsgreenb/Open-
Textbooks)

~~~
ben1040
There was a law that was supposed to make this easier, to make it so that
students have more time to look for books rather than the week before the
semester starts.

Starting in 2010 schools that receive federal financial aid are required to
list the ISBN and title of books (or author, title, publisher, and date if an
ISBN is not available) at the time of course registration.

In practice, though, one wonders how many courses have their texts listed as
"TBD" up until the week prior to the semester.

~~~
bsgreenb
The law was called the Higher Education Opportunity Act, and the bookstores
responded to it mainly by offering seperate, inconvenient search forms. If you
found your way there, you you'd then have to copy and paste the ISBN.

The law was good in spirit but in letter it didn't require making the data
available. A good law would just be that every school has to offer all the
data they send to the bookstore to everyone for bulk download.

------
yeukhon
Yes. I've pirated books from online and among peers. Most of the text books I
have used are available on the Internet. Only a few exceptions.

But as I take upper level classes I have stopped purchasing text books unless
required and necessary. I still like holding a book or reading it off my iPad
but most of the time I prefer not to read anything but my notes. Quality of
textbooks vary, just like quality of online sources vary. Textbooks should be
reference. Teachers are the one supposed to explain the details to me, but few
can do that well :/ well, teaching is hard.

------
incision
After about a year into undergrad through an online program I've been pleased
to find that most of my classes have used affordable books affordable, mass-
market sources.

In one case I simply opted for an alternative course rather than pay $148.00
for the textbook.

At the same time I've been doing ID Verified courses on edX. edX courses and
materials are a fraction of the cost with vastly superior interfaces for
everything.

Rather than just fixing the cost of materials at traditional Universities I
hope to see the whole racket of higher education broken by the MOOCs.

------
martinjones
I understand how textbooks can be expensive. It's simple supply and demand.
Fewer people buy textbooks than other types of books, so they cost more.

That's where my empathy ends. It seems to me that there's a huge problem with
unethical sales practices and underhanded tricks to reduce the used textbook
market. This article's title should have been about the shady textbook
companies rather than simply the prices of new books.

------
stingrae
This becomes especially clear when you look at the prices of international
editions of the textbook, which are often 1/10th of the price of the us
equivalent book. Such a price difference isn't caused by a publisher worried
about volume. If it sells for lower elsewhere, why not here.

------
Shivetya
Submitted something similar earlier today,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7453448)
which discusses an idea for combating these costs.

~~~
christiangenco
Are there any good repositories of open source/free textbooks?

------
yuhong
"In the UK there is much less demand on textbooks, because we don't have the
same pushy publishers. "

I wonder why?

------
arikrak
Its a completely ridiculous system, but students can buy used and
international-edition books for much cheaper.

------
clamprecht
If the price keeps going up, there will be a silk road for pirated college
textbooks.

~~~
trentmb
There kind of is one already: [http://libgen.org/](http://libgen.org/)

~~~
christiangenco
That URL doesn't load :(

~~~
trentmb
It works for me =/

I know the www prefix doesn't work. Perhaps there's some sort of filtering
being done at your location?

~~~
christiangenco
Ahh, working now! I could've sworn it had www before.

