Bills target rising college textbook prices

[Lionel Mandrake]

Source: Los Angeles Times

The high price of college textbooks is a hot issue, not just among disgruntled students weary of spending more than $100 on an economics or a chemistry tome. In Sacramento political circles, efforts to lower those costs have produced two pieces of legislation that are competing for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature.

The main authors of both are Democrats, and the two legislators say they are trying, among other things, to get more advance information to college professors about the pricing of books and whether additional material in new editions is substantial enough to merit ordering them. Requiring new editions makes it tough for students to buy or trade cheaper secondhand copies.

But the two bills vary enough that one has the support of the Assn. of American Publishers and the other is backed by the California Public Interest Research Group, which has sharply criticized the publishing industry.

The Republican governor has until Oct. 12 to decide whether to sign one, both or neither of the bills. Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the matter, according to his press office.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-textbook24sep24,1,2587064.story?coll=la-headlines-california

---

Both bills are offered by Democrats, of course. Most Republicans want to make life as difficult as possible for college students.

[bluestateguy]

1. In Massachusetts, college textbooks are exempt from the sales tax

That might be a good place to start.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. That might be a good idea, but

I would expect publishers and bookstores to raise prices where they enjoy a monopoly, e.g., on books that are customized for a particular school.

[BootinUp]

2. I like the idea of more info on revisions for profs, I assume that may

be a problem currently, but I don't really know.

[JTFrog]

3. Some of the problem

is that publishers bundle packages that benefit the profs more than the students. They have great programs that appeal to profs because they come with a multitude of tools. Anything web-based is going to run the cost to the student up significantly. For example a professor can use web-based tools to generate a class based on the isbn number of a text. The software creates the class based on pre-loaded materials such as homework and test generators. It tracks who registers for the class and automatically updates the gradebook from the assignments and tests submitted online. That's just a basic package. In order for it to work, the publisher bundles access codes with the textbooks that give the student access to the website. Unfortunately those codes usually only work once and a student purchasing a used textbook can't access the online material. So instead of saving money, they end up having to purchase the access separately. Add to that the cost of technical and customer support for both the professors and the students. Many times students are unaware of a lot of costs that pop up like this.

Profit trumping education.

[Lionel Mandrake]

17. Bundling is a dirty trick which increases profits and harms the students.

As you pointed out, many of the bundled items benefit instructors more than students.

But many of the shrink-wrapped packages in college bookstores also contain stuff that benefits neither students nor instructors, like CD-ROMs and books the instructor didn't order. This kind of bundling benefits only the publisher.

[Lionel Mandrake]

12. I think a bigger problem is that often the prof doesn't even know the price

of the book. According to the LA Times story, publisher's reps usually won't say how much the book will cost the students. Usually the prof gets a free book from the publisher.

[Viking12]

41. Yes, we get free copies

but we are VERY aware of the burden of textbook prices and price is a significant factor in textbook choice. Unfortunately, we often can't do much about the "new edition" problem or the "bundling" problem. For example: I taught a course spring 2007 using the '3rd Edition' of a textbook. I'll be teaching the same course spring semester 2008 and wanted to continue with the 3rd edition desptie the release of the 4th Edition. However, I can't guarantee the 3rd edition will be available to students as publishers buy up the old editions to get them out of circulation.

[Lionel Mandrake]

44. Older editions are usually not hard to find at web sites like the following:

http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/
http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/
http://www.abebooks.com/
http://www.alibris.com/
http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b/ref=sd_allcat_tb/104-5638441-3589540?ie=UTF8&node=465600

The used book market is so fragmented that publishers really can't buy up all the copies of a particular book to get them out of circulation.

[Viking12]

51. While the used book market is fragmented

The used textbook market is not. The buy back programs at university bookstores allow for a consolidation within the industry.

While the sites you list are useful in helping individual students save money, they don't provide a logistical alternative for larger populations. For example, the class to which I referred in my 1st post has an enrollment of 50, I could only find 21 copies of the textbook. If I require a textbook, I have to be able to ensure convenient access to the book. Forcing students to scavenge the web and/or wait weeks for a textbook is as much of a problem as high price new editions.

[Lionel Mandrake]

57. Well of course it depends on the book and the size of the class.

I am retired and take classes for the fun of it. I always scavenge the web, whether the books I need are in the campus bookstore or not. I wish more instructors would specify older editions when they are reasonably available.

The buy back programs at university bookstores have an effect on the used textbook market, but they don't corner the market. Not all students sell their textbooks back to the bookstore at the end of the semester.

If you could find 21 copies of a particular book, I'll bet your students could find an additional 29 copies. It's true that the delay can be a problem, but there are ways of coping with this problem.

[girl gone mad]

47. Yes, that is a big problem..

and one reason why I don't think these bills will work.

Some professors use books that are 30 or more years old and now out of print, but no suitable alternative exists. I know this because I work with these profs. to try and find copies each semester. You don't want the publishers to decide they can no longer make enough of a profit off of a particular subject or the situation could get even worse.

[LuckyLib]

4. Texts need to be online, with a one-time "use" fee (folks working on this have proposed $15)

fot the student to get access to the text. Each and every student, each and every class. No new books, no used books, etc. Publishers could still produce material, they just have to think differently about distributing it. As is now, students are "going in" on textbooks and copying stuff for personal use. So the book is really only actually sold once.

[Posteritatis]

6. Sorry, but I refuse to rent *my* books. (nt)

[Book Lover]

7. How much selling back do you do? (nm)

[Posteritatis]

8. Almost none after my first year. (nt)

[mitchum]

35. I have also been in favor of that solution, but the education industry...

will never allow it. Never.

[Book Lover]

40. self-delete

[ryanmuegge]

9. Fuck. Try being an English major: 25 books for one upper-level class.

[Lionel Mandrake]

10. That's infuckingcredible

I've never heard of a class requiring so many books. Maybe your instructor wanted to set a new record.

[kirby]

11. Yeah but....

Arent english books, especially 25, mostly paperback novels used to survey various genres?

In technical classes, you will pay $150 or more for ONE book.

[WindRavenX]

14. i paid 250 for my organic chem book

Got 20 bucks back.

And no, there WERE no used copies :(

[Book Lover]

15. May I ask a question?

If the sellback price is so poor, why'd you bother selling it back? Why not keep it?

[kirby]

16. I never sold my books back...

I figured sitting on my bookshelf for reference use one day was worth more than the pittance they buy it back for.

[ryanmuegge]

31. 23 paperback novels, 2 hardcover textbooks = approximately $350

You are right, though. A lot of the paperbacks were not that expensive, but they add up.

[mitchum]

34. As an English major, I never spent more than $100 a semester

I either already owned the texts or was able to pick up used paperback editions.
The books for the required classes outside of my field are what really cut into my booze and cigarette budget :)

[Posteritatis]

13. A history class I almost took

Required seven textbooks - not novels or other small things, but big kill-a-mugger specialized textbooks - for one course. The texts totalled about a thousand dollars, not counting "optional" texts. The class cost $450. (My school charged tuition per credit, not semester.)

I walked on principle from that one. (Turns out the prof was one of those types who treated his class as though it was the only one the students ever took anyway; hell with that.)

[Lionel Mandrake]

20. Ouch!

There is something wrong when the textbooks cost more than the class. And $1000 is way too much for textbooks in a history class.

Enormous expenses for textbooks are common in medical schools, but that's a whole 'nother story.

[Posteritatis]

25. I can see those sorts of prices

But not for undergraduate courses. If it's a specialist topic, the student's a doctoral student/candidate, and the books are sufficiently arcane/out-of-the-way/etc and he wants them in his library, then I can understand those kinds of expenses. I start feeling ripped off after a little over $100 per course unless the textbooks are fantastic. (I'm still kicking myself for selling back one of my Roman history textbooks because of that.)

Then again, I'm in graduate school in history right now, and I've spent $50 on textbooks so far, not counting the French stuff for the language exam. I'm strangely comfortable with that. (Then again, it means we might as well be given cots in the library.)

[entanglement]

30. In the sciences / engineering, professors pay for expensive research level textbooks

with research funds and build up a nice collection over time. Their grad students can borrow them from the adviser and not worry about issues of affordability.

[rainbow4321]

18. My kid went into sticker shock this semester

As a theater tech student she has only had to pay at the most 70-80 bucks max per semester up til this semester (Junior year) when she enrolled in a couple business classes in addition to her theater tech classes: $600 was her bookstore bill, more than her month's rent!!
Fortunately, she had gotten enough AP credit in high school so she never had to do the basic pre-reqs (English, History, etc...) when she started college. Because of all the AP credit she started out with, she will finish in 3.5 yrs instead of 4.

[Psephos]

19. Books aren't the problem. How about some focus on why tuition has risen at 10%/year for two decades?

Turning most students into mortgage holders without the house.

I don't understand how colleges get a free pass on this. The money by-and-large isn't going to professors, it's going to staffing, building, and department creep. Meanwhile, as costs go endlessly up, quality of education has been stagnant at best.

It's common for bachelor's degree graduates to leave school owing $50-$75 thousand. A fourth of those with the monster debts don't earn a degree, which makes decades of debt slavery nearly certain.

[Lionel Mandrake]

21. Granted, tuition is a bigger problem than textbook prices.

Why don't you start a thread about tuition?

[Psephos]

23. You have a point there

And you handled it with aplomb.

Meanwhile, here's a little contribution to this thread:

http://www.isbn.nu/

Helps you find the cheapest source for college books you need by comparing 14 online textbook stores.

[Lionel Mandrake]

24. Thank you.

Another web site similar to isbn.nu is BestBookBuys:

http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/

[rayofreason]

29. Watch out...

...somone could get angry if you disclose to much information

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519564

[Psephos]

45. Heh heh - publicly displayed prices are now "intellectual property"

Perhaps the bookstore's owners should consider changing the name of their establishment. Nothing very co-operative going on there.

Thanks for the warning. ;-) I'll keep an eye out for any unmarked black panel vans circling my block....

[Lionel Mandrake]

48. Yes, and ISBNs are for your EYES ONLY.

Anyone caught writing down this classified information with the intent of carrying it out of the store will be kicked out of the store. So there!

[LuckyLib]

42. States have always subsidized public higher education. They have squeezed colleges

and universities down to retro-funding, while at the same time health care for employees and students, energy costs, and other expenses have risen drastically. They're simply passing it on to tuition paying students. If you can't pay the full ride, or aren't on a good financial aid package, you're are SOL for paying for college. It's criminal, and middle amerika is losing out.

[Realityhack]

56. Very true but...

and it's only a minor but...

Textbooks are often NOT something one can put on a loan. So even someone who can afford a 1% increase in tuition because of loans might not be able to accept the same dolar amount in text book costs.

tuition is the real problem though.

[Sabriel]

22. Authors make no money after the first sale

You can see why they might want to issue frequent editions, as only bookstores make anything on subsequent re-sales.

I try to keep text costs down in my courses by using journal articles when possible and attempting to find a cheaper text that does what I need it to. And I keep track of what my texts cost students, even if I don't know what their overall text bill is.

The other thing that always irritated me about buying texts was not using all or a majority of them. I routinely had instructors who required texts that we only read parts of. That I'll never do!

[Indy Lurker]

26. Professors self interest

My problem is that all of my professors, or their friends wrote their own textbooks, so they had an incentive to change books often.

[Posteritatis]

28. Heh, the one prof I had who wrote his own text

Changed it regularly, but for a reason - it was an introductory political science course, and he updated it every Canadian election (with the exception of the recent ones that were just a year or so apart) or so. I think that counts as acceptable reason to, and he made sure the price on the thing stayed low. A few of my other profs wrote textbooks, but actually didn't teach out of them because they were wary of the conflict of interest involved.

[HereSince1628]

27. Textbooks frequently come with a lot of support that also costs money

Chemistry and Biology texts for common core courses often are backed up by CD's that come with the text, test banks, banks of figures available in overheads and digital format, websites with CAI study aids and updated links to current topics related to the texts. Some even include chatrooms and on-line support to answer student questions.

I'm actually not surprised at the cost of the books when they come with this sort of ancillary materials.

Books aren't nearly as expensive to college students as many students cellphone bills, but for some reason the books are seen as too expensive while the cellphones are obviously indispensible.

[Lionel Mandrake]

32. Most of the crap that is bundled with textbooks does not benefit students.

Some of it benefits instructors. Some of it is totally useless. All of it is an unreasonable burden on students, who must pay not only for what the instructor requires, but also for other items that the publishers add to the shrink-wrapped packages.

The fact that many students have cell phones is incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. We're talking about books here.

[HereSince1628]

36. Whether a book is read or ancillary materials are used is also irrelevant

to the _price_ of the book. What seems more important in this debate is the _VALUE_ of the book. And a book's value is something that must be evaluated in context.

The price of the book must be based on costs incurred by the publisher in producing the book, and all the acrued costs to the retailer (campus and off campus booksellers) in acquiring and selling/shipping the book.

The question of the book's/ancillaries being over costly based on use by each student is on the one hand a personal issue of how each student interacts with the text. On the otherhand use of the book depends on the success or failure of an instructor to develop the course of study to incorporate the text. Neither effects the pricing of the book, but both effect the value of the book to the student and the course.

Students and parents wouldn't complain about the cost of books unless they felt that the purchase of textbooks interrupted the use of money to address other of their spending priorities that were not offset by the comparative value of the book. Consequently, the value and prioritization of books compared to other purchases, including pocket electronics, associated subscriptions and download costs, is relevant to the perceptions of whether books are overly costly.

It's fair enough to ask whether a course actually needs textbook support. Certainly, from the perspective of that ever present cohort of students who sometimes glance at but don't study their texts the price of books is always too high.
Something that students and families may not realize is that instructors are commonly required to have an assigned textbook. While I believe there are some valid arguments for the practice, that practice also contributes to a student's total book cost and should also be questioned.

[LeftyMom]

46. My experience with that stuff is that most of it is worthless

My Astronomy instructor was asked by the dept. head to try using the online learning option with our text over this summer.

For starters, used books did not have an access code, so students who tried to save money wound up having to spend more than those who bought new after buying access to the website.

Then it took two weeks to get the publisher (Thompson) to get access for the class set up correctly, so scores for the first few weeks were lost.

Then, scores would be randomly lost after that. I got in the habit of printing my results out, which was good because only half of my grades got recorded.

The modules themselves were simplistic, repetitive and had unreasonably long page loads.

To say that I was unimpressed would be a huge understatement.

[HereSince1628]

52. Maybe they weren't useful to you, but they cost money to produce, the cost goes into the book

I think there is a huge problem in this debate mixing the notions or worth (value?) and issues of book costs.

I also think students should put themselves in the position of instructors who choose books and administrators who often demand books be listed for a course. Certainly books can be required and not well incorporated in a course, and that could make the book and the ancillaries ' worth less ' than some other mode of communication in the course. That's not an issue of the price of a book, its an issue of whether a curriculum was well or poorly developed. A separate issue entirely.

Books and ancillaries can help schools and instructors deal with student absences, special tutorial needs, and in some cases the ancillaries can help address issues required by various state and federal disabilities acts. Having these materials available obviously means someone has to prepare them. Obviously the work preparing them and the investment to produce them must be compensated for in the price of the book.

However, the ancillaries provide various forms of assistance to the course. Students who, unlike you, may actually need them, can indeed benefit from them. And it is on that HOPE that instructors often hang their choices. I was once able to choose a text that actually had on-line audio readings included in the ancillaries -- a tremendous "value" to students with vision and/or reading problems.

When, as a newly minted PhD doing a gig as a visiting assistant professor before my first full time job, I taught freshman and sophomore level courses at Texas A&M. I had courses with way more than 200 students. The digital testbank was tremendously helpful in making available "make up" tests for students who for one reason or another couldn't make the exam. And in classes that large there are ALWAYS a dozen or so student who miss (athletes, marching band members, etc. etc.). Students reasonably get very unhappy if one of their classmates gets a chance to see a test before it is taken. This makes professors reluctant to compromise tests and test answers before the make-ups are given. The ability to make and give alternate tests in a matter of an hour or so means test answers can be posted outside the exam room or that the tests can be returned to students BEFORE other students take their make-up. Students seem to NEVER want to wait to get test scores back. That worthless ancillary helped me quite a bit in trying to satisfy students desires to get the exam back immediately if not sooner. How much each student considers that worth is a personal issue but it's another example of something that most students never consider as part of the "value" of those worthless ancillaries.

[LeftyMom]

53. There's plenty of evidence that most instructors never use the extras.

Based on that experience and having looked over some other bundled materials, I have a pretty good idea. Most of that stuff is absolutely worthless.

[Lionel Mandrake]

59. You have made several cogent points,

and I thank you for a well thought out post, even though I disagree with most of it.

I agree that students should put themselves in the position of instructors who choose books and administrators ... . The insights gained from this exercise can help students develop strategies for coping with unreasonable prices. In other words, know thine enemy.

You have described the clear and direct benefits of certain "ancillaries" to the instructor and the less clear, indirect benefits to the students. So it seems the students are paying quite a lot to make the instructors' lives easier. That is a worthwhile goal, especially in a huge class such as you have described, but why should the students have to pay for it? I submit that students in huge classes are getting a raw deal.

[HereSince1628]

62. Yes, of course, students are paying for choices made by instructors.

But then students are also paying for the choices of administrators with respect to class size, admission standards, etc.

Without the ancillaries that make courses with ridiculously large enrollments possible tuition would be even higher.

Instructors are not the enemy but they are a convenient target. Students and parents actively ignore all workload for instruction that takes place outside the classroom. Given the number of hours available in a 2000 hour work-year, it's impossible for instructors of large courses to provide anything like individual attention (dealing with absences, missed exams, etc) to everyone in a large class without support. Tuition costs would be higher, not lower, if class size were limited to the 16 students that research says is the flexion point above which every additional student erodes individual attention an instructor can provide.

Students with special needs are not the enemy either, but their needs place additional demands on instructors and institutions. Unfortunately, it takes a minimum of 21-24 students per class to break even on the instructionaL and institutional costs of providing the class. Upper division classes at even moderate sized universities frequently have 8-10 students as a minimum for a class to go forward. SO to make upper division courses possible, even larger lower division enrollment per course is needed. To make tuition 'reasonable' and course offerings possible across the board there is a desire to always have more students assigned to an instructor than research shows can effectively be dealt with.

The ancillary materials provide BOTH logistic support for instructors, and educational support for students that may not solve, but do provide mitigation of the circumstances.

Not deeply hidden on college campuses, there is an academic triage going on that parents and students don't understand. Not quite half of the students admitted to a 4 year college aren't going to complete their sophomore year. Students with less than adequate preparation to succeed at college are admitted and too often encouraged to take on debt in order to generate revenue streams that keep the lights on for all students. In public institutions, state aid is scaled to enrollment, in the majority of private institutions which dot our land, tuition covers all the costs. Many students get admitted to generate the revenue, but instructors can't deal with more than a handful of students with real learning problems.

Instructors are by and large forced to abandon the notion of individual attention, severely restrict remediation (i.e. they rarely go back over material that students didn't understand), and often severely limit their participation in pre-test study sessions, etc. In short, many at-risk students, admitted to keep an institution afloat, are forced to shoulder more of the burden of overcoming their academic short-comings than they can succeed at alone. Publishers know this and they provide ancillary materials to help students do that on their own. Instructors choose texts with good ancillaries not for the good students, but to mitigate the plight of the poorly performing students who will populate their classrooms.

For students who are reasonably bright, well motivated, and adequately prepared for college, the ancillary materials probably MUST seem unnecessary and therefore a cost with no return. But college is no different than the rest of society. We spread social burdens across everyone. At risk students are admitted to help keep tuition costs low and to keep the institution in operation for the betterment of students who survive. But the better students who benefit from that policy must give something back to the at risk students to keep them willing to participate. It's a case of one hand washing the other. The cost of the ancillaries is part of that, industrially organized academic resource centers trying to batch process ill-prepared students are another part of that, time-saving measures within the ancillaries that help instructors deal with over-large enrollments are also part of that.

[Javaman]

33. Price of text books for 4 years of college: $10,000

Price for 4 years at a medium rated college:$80,000

The result of the student slaving away for 4 years upon graduation: Priceless.

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's indentured servitude.

[HereSince1628]

38. A question about those numbers

$20K per year looks to me like a reasonable average figure for 4.5 years at public and private schools and could include shared-room, board, transportation, and ancillary costs (clothing, telephone, etc).

However, I suspect that if the costs of "lost opportunity" were included the total costs of a higher education would be rather higher. The most obvious lost opportunity is that of being gainfully employed rather than being in school. It is likely that oppotunity cost for 9 months could range from just under $10K for a minimum wage job to somewhere in the $30-$40 range for low-entry skill full time work (such as local cartage drivers).

Lost opportunity is just as important as educational costs when trying to determine if the price of an education is justified by likely returns (and I will grant that some returns are in value that cannot be measured in terms of dollars, though those values must be assessed individually).

Do you know if the number you posted includes lost opportunity?

[Posteritatis]

58. I've never heard of a school where textbooks cost $2500/year. (nt)

[mbperrin]

37. When I was earning my master's at the University of Phoenix

4 years ago, all the textbooks for each course were downloadable for a set fee of $48 total, whether one book or 6. This was a great way to cut costs and if you needed a little section or a graph, you could just print it out, leaving the rest on the hard drive. Highlighting is also flexible this way and can be changed after the fact.

[hunter]

39. Universities need to develop "Open Source" textbooks...

From grade school on up.

Open source software works. I'm posting this from a machine running Ubuntu, and all of the software I use daily is free. Textbooks could be done in a similar manner, and sold for the cost of printing them to anyone wanting a hard copy. But you could also save trees and not use a hard copy.

The awful truth is that the textbook industry has been absorbed into the corrupt corporate political machine that runs this entire nation.

[depakid]

43. And in most cases, it's NOT the profs who are raking in the dough

it's the academic publishing parasites.

[rayofreason]

49. A professor once told me...

...if you want to make money, don't write a book.

He estimated that he made about $0.02/hr. Now he wrote a book that was not too popular. If you write a book for an intro course with 100,000's of customers each year (for the new edition of course!) and the book grabs a good bit of market share (say 10%), you could make some real money. But most of the money is made by the publishers and the bookstores.

[depakid]

50. Lots of times, chapters of leading books are written by different Profs

and you're right- they make squat, pretty much regardless of how popular the book becomes.

[Lionel Mandrake]

54. I met a retired professor who is co-author of a book on world history.

He makes more money from that book than he ever did from teaching.

[Realityhack]

55. Sometimes

the professor's whos names are on the books don't even know someone is using their name.

[Lionel Mandrake]

60. Can you give an example? n/t

[Realityhack]

61. Unfortunately not of the top of my head.

I would have to look it up. Someone was doing a report on textbooks and went to proffesors with some books that contained inaccuracies and they had no idea their name was on it... It may have been high school texts.