College Textbook Prices Have Risen 1,041 Percent Since 1977

[IDemo]

Students hitting the college bookstore this fall will get a stark lesson in economics before they've cracked open their first chapter. Textbook prices are soaring. Some experts say it's because they're sold like drugs.

According to NBC's review of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, textbook prices have risen over three times the rate of inflation from January 1977 to June 2015, a 1,041 percent increase.

"They've been able to keep raising prices because students are 'captive consumers.' They have to buy whatever books they're assigned," said Nicole Allen, a spokeswoman for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.

In some ways, this is similar to a pharmaceutical sales model where the publishers spend their time wooing the decision makers to adopt their product. In this case, it's professors instead of doctors.

http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/freshman-year/college-textbook-prices-have-risen-812-percent-1978-n399926

[former9thward]

1. Very often profs will assign books

where only a small section is to be read. A real rip off.

[a la izquierda]

10. Or some of us will assign the cheapest books we can.

[Massacure]

16. Or some will even write their own.

I had two professors do that. One of them actually had it printed by a publisher -- while it wasn't exactly cheap, it was cheaper than most of my other text books. The other just gave us a several hundred page long Microsoft Word document and told us to go to the computer lab and print it, which costs us seven cents a page (in 2006 through 2010). The professor who gave us the Word docs taught in my field of study, so I had him for four or five different classes. I easily saved several hundred dollars between all my classes with him.

[a la izquierda]

17. In History that's possible../

But the books would be outrageous. And I'm not permitted to assign books for which I will get ANY monetary gain. Because I get paid just so freakin' well by the state as is

[exboyfil]

14. My daughter's Communications prof

made the textbook optional this summer because of the cost. Saved $50 on rental. Several professors allow older editions to be used so a less expensive used book can be used.

On the other hand many professors bundle the textbook requirement with pretty dubious homework software that is very expensive.

Oftentimes for textbooks you should really keep a copy of I will rent the version required and purchase an older edition. When I was doing some tutoring (the first semester my daughter was off to college) I had an older version at home as well.

Another technique is selling back the recent version when it is required and purchasing the older edition. Also sometimes international editions can be acquired for far less money (these paperback editions are actually more convenient especially when the textbook is used in class like in my daughter's machine design class).

[kiva]

20. I bundle the textbook with required online material

because the exams rely less on memorization and more on learning to connect information, but the price is a steal - $30 for a 4 month access to material and textbook for an American History class.

It's really more about the discipline - I can easily keep book costs down, my colleagues in math and science not so much.

[exboyfil]

22. That makes much more sense

I thought my daughter's chemistry (McGraw Hill Connect) was possibly the worst software I have ever seen. Entering chemical formulas and Lewis diagrams online is tedious. I really feel that it involves a level of laziness from the instructors - these sections were really not that large (this summer it was under 20 students). In many cases the instructors even used canned power points from the textbook.

[kiva]

40. Publisher reps are selling these packages based on the idea

that the professor really doesn't have to do anything more than grade, and some disciplines lean toward electronic grading. It happens, but right now I only know one professor who utilizes the package this way - he's lazy and prefers to spend his time in other ways.

[HereSince1628]

29. Accreditation agencies do require that structure be provided in courses

and a required textbook is a typical expectation.

The utility of a text to a course should be a high priority in deciding whether a text should be required, but, it isn't always an instructor's choice to do away with a book or even to choose the book used. Sometimes that falls to committee. One university I taught at had an introductory sequence that went across 3 quarters using the same text. Six full time instructors, the learning-center co-ordinator, and the departmental chair all were involved in the text decisions for thel 9 instructors who taught in the sequence.

College/university administrators need to be sure their institutions meet accreditation standards or students enrolling won't be eligible for gov't backed loans.

The desire to protect students and ensure quality and institutional accountability has created a bureaucracy largely reliant on outdated experience of the lawmakers and bureaucrats who set the standards. It's a system that has inherently conservative and slow-changing features.

[hunter]

54. What would you think of books written in an "Open Source" fashion?

I honestly think this would work in public institutions, kindergarten through university, if either the federal government or a big state like California paid a few professors and teachers extra to gently supervise such projects. A few hours a week.

There's no reason to burden students or taxpayers with high textbook costs. Develop texts in a format friendly as e-books, web pages, and books-on-demand.

Fourteen bucks at most in paper.

Furthermore, such free texts might raise educational standards throughout the world.

As a public school science teacher I didn't have a lot of respect for the commercial texts.

I am by natural inclination, and quite a bit of formal training and field work, an evolutionary biologist. Commercial K-12 textbooks are frequently arranged so evolution can be danced around in fundamentalist world.

K-12 public school history texts are worst; often pure crap. American exceptionalism.

American university professors are very familiar with Straight-A+ freshmen who don't know shit, and part of that is because commercial interests are selling textbooks that appeal to the largest market of the God-Bess-America-Ignorant. There are profits to be made by not offending those who control the money.

My wife, her sister, and one of my kids live in that academic world where the unbreakable laws of the universe and indisputable human history are somehow held in less-than-equal standing with insane human religions, politics, and economic ideologies.

[HereSince1628]

56. My biggest concern in textbooks was appropriate content

If that was provided in open source form that would be fine with me.

I taught in college and university biology departments, so I am quite familiar with students and the patterns of their learning.

Most college and university introductory biology courses in the US follow the pattern of the BSCS curriculum, which places basic chemistry at the beginning and ecological phenomena at the end. Evolution isn't usually mentioned until after cellular replication and basic genetics are discussed, so that elementary concepts of microevolutionary theory like Hardy-Weinberg can be discussed.

The growth of contemporary biology in molecular biology/life science added much to the front end of the BSCS curriculum and that growth has pushed ecology and evolution ever more toward the back of texts. As these topics are not seen as being especially essential to foundations for health-sciences curricula, more effort is given to introductions to organismal biology, particularly anatomy and physiology. Both evolution and ecology are treated as providing flexibility and options for trimming courses down to what is often argued as 'what the biology students -really- need'. And that choice is driven by cultural desire as much as by essentials of science education.

Although I've personally seen evolution and ecology dropped from intro bio courses for pre-nurses at a catholic university, I'm not really sure if religious anti-evolution attitudes or economic anti-environmental attitudes are really the drivers of less and less introductory level coverage of those topics. It may be more the American drive to 'get on with it' and not require students to deal with "useless" concepts and mountains of non-essential regolith littering the next steps in the paths of their training.

That produces some strange perceptions in society. Many people equate biology education with training in medicine & health, but persons trained in special undergraduate programs like nursing and exercise science/pre-physical therapy, actually have very limited backgrounds in biology. Training for pre-meds is often only marginally better as pre-meds often take intermediate core courses which expose them to more elements of ecology and evolution. But in some colleges and universities the desire to provide flexible options at the intermediate level allow student choices that leave them without intermediate competence in the general area of population biology essential to advanced/sophisticated understanding evolution.

To be fair, the desire of academic institutions to provide choices in educational paths has consequences for the uniformity of educational backgrounds of college/university biology majors. While I agree with you that many students get through with limited understanding of ecology and evolution (and required supporting math), other undergraduates, say those seeking training of fisheries management or wildlife management may have better backgrounds in ecology and biotic diversity (and math), but they tend to be thinner in understanding of molecular and cellular biology.

[hunter]

58. Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

This "limited understanding of ecology and evolution" is a serious flaw in medicine. We search intensely for the magic medicine that will fix someone who is sick, but not so much at the environment that is making people sick.

[Adrahil]

32. I'm sure it happens, but....

I would not say very often by any stretch.

My wife is a college professor, and almost all our friends are academics. NONE of them do as you mention. In fact, whenever they assign a limited reading from a text book, they almost always make use of Fair-use rules and provide the excerpt (it has to be legal, of course). And most just avoid doing that. My wife tries to avoid more than one "text book" when possible, which is reasonably easy for her, since she is a literature professors, and so teaches a lot of novels. But our other friends try to do the same.

[former9thward]

46. The fact is that college students are captive customers.

The reason texts cost so much is that no one reads the book or will buy the book except the captives. Sometimes the book is written by the prof themselves and no one will buy it except the captives.

[LanternWaste]

49. Sounds like an episode of Alex Jones.

Sounds like an episode of Alex Jones.

[former9thward]

51. I'm sure you know best...

[cloudbase]

2. Kickbacks aren't cheap.

"Incentives" are even more expensive.

[kimbutgar]

3. All these college text book companies consolidated and became monopolies.

A lot of them are in Texas. Some college get kickbacks for selling these overpriced books. All this happened in the 1980's under Reagan.

Years later I went back to college to get my teaching credential. I was shocked by the textbook prices. I had a teacher once tell us the college required in the syllabus that they require an official textbook. She was careful in saying , "don't buy the text book " but said, "there might be some required readings". Mostly she supplied us with web links of required readings and sold a $25 folder of handouts. I never did buy that $75 textbook and got an "A" in the class, plus the library had the text book so I read it there.

When I was in college in the mid 70's my textbooks cost me total about $150 per semester.

[liberal N proud]

4. The University I graduated from still rents textbooks.

Saves thousands.

The tuition is still reasonable by today's standard.

[tammywammy]

5. I graduated from graduate school last May

Textbook rentals are available from a variety of sources, plus international textbooks and one edition older are a good alternative.

[Recursion]

23. I torrented mine in grad school

There's no way I could have afforded to buy them.

[pstokely]

52. but you can't sell rented textbooks or ebooks

nt

[liberal N proud]

55. And that is a problem?

If you don't have the investment in them up front, there is no need to sell them for a loss.

The rental fee is far less than the hit you take on the text book. When I was in school 30 years ago it was $25 a semester. Currently it is $40. They also include a laptop with your tuition.

[mike_c]

6. there is another side of this story that's worth considering....

I bought my college and grad school texts nearly 30 years ago. Sure, they were expensive then just as they're expensive now, although arguably most college students don't have significantly better means now than they had 30 years ago, making today's texts at least as difficult to afford as those three decades ago.

But the point I want to make-- as a university professor-- is that those books are meant to represent a lifetime investment in learning, not a prohibitive one-time expense. It breaks my heart to see my students today returning their books at the end of each semester for a "buy back" pittance or worse, seeing them rent their books for the semester in the first place. Yes, books were expensive, but nearly 30 years later I still have most of them on my shelves. I still use them occasionally, especially those that are tangential to my primary discipline at best. Not being a chemist or a molecular biologist, for example, my university biochem text will probably serve as a useful enough reference for the rest of my career. And while I've needed considerably more quantitative training to keep pace with my own discipline, those foundational texts in algebra, geometry, and calculus are just as useful today as they ever were.

I can honestly say that I've never once regretted the cost of my university texts. I've struggled to pay for them, but was proud to buy every one that I purchased. Over the intervening decades I've only disposed of a handful (I can confidently say that someone else likely got far more use from my old COBOL text than I ever did, LOL, even if all they did was use it as a door stop). Most are still on my shelf, still see occasional use, and are still among my most prized possessions. When I moved from the east coast to the west, I divested myself of possessions brutally, as the movers charged per pound by the mile. Books were just about the only exception to the general divestment, so in truth I've paid for many of my old college texts twice-- once to purchase them initially, and again to move them across the country. I still don't regret a single penny.

[Major Nikon]

8. Not quite the same, though

The normal rate of inflation from 1977 is 400%, which means textbook prices have risen about 2.5 times more than you would expect from inflation alone.

Furthermore you didn't have the internet 30 years ago, so it made a lot more sense to keep books.

[mike_c]

9. that's a good point about the internet....

I grew up with books, not computers. My house is filled with books-- books in bookcases and books in rickety stacks. I spend more on books than all my other forms of self entertainment combined. My SO tries to convince me to use the library more often, but there is something about the ownership of books that I find particularly compelling.

[Major Nikon]

12. I love to collect books also

But these days I only opt for ownership if it's a book I know I will treasure. Most of my reading now is on ebooks, which is the form of media all universities and even prep schools should be completely converting. It makes a lot more sense than humping around a backbreaking backpack and the cost savings should be passed down.

[exboyfil]

15. Yes you should definitely retain the books in your discipline

but there is nothing wrong with renting a $250 textbook for $50 and purchasing a prior edition for $25 thus saving considerable change.

I have kept one edition of textbooks in my discipline (mechanical engineering). I did declutter by getting rid most of my MBA textbooks a few years ago, but my standard textbooks in engineering I retain. Did keep my textbooks from my favorite MBA classes (Managerial Economics and Finance though). Also held onto my books from my engineering ethics class which was my favorite class in college. I did recently pitch my old Biology textbook - the information was just too outdated to be useful. Recently I looked at an older Biochemistry textbook that I had acquired some years ago, and I also was startled at how much has been discovered since its printing. I really can't say the same for my Newtonian based engineering textbooks. There is little new to be found in Statics, Dynamics, Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, or Heat Transfer. While the graphics are superior in the new textbooks, they are still using the same example problems as my Purdue profs did when they printed the textbook in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

[eppur_se_muova]

34. I understand what you're saying, and always tended to think the same way ... BUT ...

costs of textbooks have been growing far faster than inflation, and not because the product is better. Textbook publishers are gaming the system, and it has gotten increasingly out of control in recent years.

"New" editions of textbooks are being released every 2-3 years, even though there's no substantial change in the material, just a change in the lineup of authors. Students with older editions cannot resell them when the new edition is released -- there are commodity sellers of old textbooks who put them on Amazon for cost of shipping, and there's no competing with that. Answers to problems, at least every other one, used to be printed in the back of the book. Now, typically you can only get the answers in a separate solutions manual, which costs well over $100. Plus there's the "Web access" package, which is usually on a shovelware CD bundled with the book, and students don't always have the option of purchasing just the book w/o the CD. Actual cost of CD to publisher: next to nothing. Oh, and don't forget the separate "Study Guide", which many students feel pressured to buy because they think it will help their grades, even if it's not required.

I paid $64 for textbooks my first semester in school; next semester was $80. I did resell a few of my books. Now my own students are paying $200 for a single textbook (w/o solutions manual, study guide, or models) which is used for two semesters and not useful for any other course. The last Dept. in which I taught was allowing students to use any one of the three latest editions of the textbook -- but ordered its own *customized*, looseleaf version of the textbook as the new default. These are virtually impossible to resell, unless you dump them at a loss as soon as you finish the course (assuming there's not a new edition yet.) Textbook publishers have figured out how to milk the market for everything that's there to get, and there is a backlash building. I rather resent any implication that the professors teaching the courses are somehow in on it, getting a "kickback" or anything like that. Most of my colleagues have been increasingly worried about the costs of textbooks and are increasingly basing their decisions on student costs -- unfortunately, their choices are limited to the best of a bad lot, and there's not much they can do to fight it. Nor do they have the time and other resources to devote to such a fight. Whatever textbook you choose, no matter how thorough the review process and no matter how much you are satisfied with it, you never know when the publisher will (unexpectedly, and despite reassurances to the contrary) suddenly discontinue the current edition in favor of a new edition with some more shovelware that purportedly justifies a big jump in price. It's getting more and more common for instructors to try to assemble a "package" of existing texts -- some not even regarded as textbooks, just reprints of older manuals, articles, etc., together with "in-house" material -- to avoid requiring an expensive text. Unfortunately, that works for lab courses and more advanced classroom courses, but high-enrollment introductory courses are sort of stuck with the options on the market -- which is anything but a "free" market.

Walk into any bookstore and browse the shelves in one of the technical sections -- computers, engineering, medical, etc. -- and you'll find books with highly specialized technical instruction selling for $40-50. For people who need that info, the cost is mostly worth it, but they do have options, and authors of such books have to compete. Textbooks aren't chosen in the same way. They're sold in large lots, by contract, and need to be ordered well in advance, with the approval of multiple layers of bureaucracy. They are marketed directly to the purchasers by the publishers' representatives (on commission of course), and the number of publishers who can afford to stay in the game is limited. Not surprisingly, they all tend to function in the same way, leading to apparent collusion where there's really just an inability to swim against the stream. If you want some idea of how much this affects the costs to students, consider this case: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2536610 Be sure to scroll up to the OP as well.

[jwirr]

38. I also have many of my books from the 70s and find it sad that they are not kept. One way I

saved money on books back then was that my sister and I were working on the same degree and we shared our books. Sometimes it was hard if we were in the same class at the same time but for the most part sharing is also an option.

[aikoaiko]

7. I usually assign the previous edition which cost 25-30% of a new unread edition.

[a la izquierda]

11. I do course readers and try and find the cheapest editions I can...

of course, I teach a field in history in which this is an option.

[edhopper]

13. this is part of the decades long effort

To place the cost of education mostly on the students and awasy from the state.
The main purpose is to keep taxes low on the rich.

[DFW]

18. No shit

When my younger daughter went through undergrad and grad school from 2003-2010, I think I spent the equivalent of a semester's tuition on her books.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. The local community college's english teacher wrote her own textbook.

She wrote it, and sells it at cost (like $10 or so), for that very reason.

[Art_from_Ark]

21. That is about the same rate at which in-state tuition has risen at the University of Arkansas

In 1977, tuition for an in-state Arts & Sciences student was roughly $300 per semester. Now the tuition is closer to $3000 per semester.

[raccoon]

24. In SC, the state has been giving public colleges & universities less and less money. I'd bet it is

the same in Arkansas.

And the tuition has to come from somewhere.

[goldent]

25. I don't understand why textbooks are needed at all for introductory classes

like Calculus or Chemistry. As far as I know professors still lecture - why do they need a textbook?

[eppur_se_muova]

35. Because there's at least three times more material in the textbook than can be covered in lecture ?

Students are expected to spend ~3 hours studying for each hour of lecture in science courses. Those who fail to follow this rule tend to fill out the bottom of the grade curve.

[goldent]

37. That's probably true in some subjects

I was thinking of things like introductory physics and calculus - it all should be covered in lecture, and there is plenty of reference material on the web (including entire free courses from major universities). Fortunately, more and more professors are putting their own books on the web for free. The textbook publishers are putting up a fight still, trying to get students to pay >100 for an introductory calculus textbook.

[1939]

44. When I was in college

We always said that one third of the material was presented in the lectures, one third of the material was presented in the text book, and one third of the material was given to you on the final exam.

[eppur_se_muova]

45. That's the ticket ! :^D nt

[pstokely]

53. it's usually grad students who teach the intro classes

nt

[CrispyQ]

26. I am sick to death of the "everything for profit" model.

[AngryAmish]

27. And that 8s why Howard Zinn's kids are enormously wealthy.

[HereSince1628]

28. My freshman zoology text had no color anything, few illustrations and no ancillary materials.

The publisher included a lab-manual...sold separately. I paid $22 for a new copy...in inflation corrected dollars, that's probably the equivalent of $120. My classmates and I complained among ourselves about the cost.

The last freshman zoology text that I taught from had color on every page, often at least one illustration on every page. It also had a lab-manual, and access to an on-line website that included a discussion board, the book itself came with a CD, interactive study guides loaded with graphics and videos automated quizzes, etc. And then there are materials intended to help the instructor...including canned power-points, libraries of graphics for making instructor presentations, test-generators etc.

In an attempt to keep the cost down, special editions were produced with about half the chapters cut out of the full version. The resulting "book" still cost $80.

All that stuff costs money to produce...scientific illustrators expect to be paid, education specialists who write test-banks expect (well at least -should expect-)to be paid fairly, have benefits like health insurance and retirement etc.

I'm really not at all surprised at the price of many textbooks because there is much more going on than just the textbook.

[eppur_se_muova]

36. Lots of pretty pictures don't make a better book ...

... and much of that material for the instructor is pretty useless, unless you really don't know how to teach.

You won't be surprised that I'm not a fan of shovelware CD's, either.

I think I could teach a pretty good General Chemistry out of Linus Pauling's 1970 book, augmented with some handouts. I hope I'll get the chance to try it someday.

Dr. Pauling's one request at that time was that we keep the price affordable for students.

[HereSince1628]

39. The reality is illustrations do make many books better, the question is what makes better better?

Illustration is of varying importance for different reasons, including some subjects being more amenable to graphic communication and some students being more capable of understanding visualizations. That figures/illustrations aren't equally useful in all areas isn't reason to dismiss them of all significance.

Diagrams/flow models, organizational hierarchies, networked/linked 'maps' of concepts, can be and often are useful in communicating information that for many students is difficult to obtain out of just the printed word.

And visual communication is particularly important in contemporary science classrooms where verbal skills are no longer the currency of the realm as they were say back in 1970.

Isn't it interesting that Pauling was much interested in the 3d structural representations (visualizations) of molecules? Structures that relatively few people can perceive from only verbal descriptions.

Isn't it particularly curious that one of Paulings greatest disappointments...the failure to win the race to describe the structure of DNA...largely resulted from his competitors accessing an x-ray crystalograph...before he did?

[Orrex]

30. I complained that I had to buy a new $100 Shakespeare each semester

Each "complete works" was more or less identical, with no commentary or new interpretations, and certainly no new works by The Bard. I was pretty steamed about it...

Until my friend lamented having to buy new $300 calculus books every semester, along with $150 study guides for each.


What a bullshit gouge!

[exboyfil]

41. A Calculus textbook should be used for three semesters

Unless you get off sequence by a semester you should never be expected to purchase another one. If the school is I would complain to high heaven. It was something of a concern for my daughter and her pricey Chemistry textbook (and software). She took Chem I in the fall, but could not fit Chem II into her schedule in the spring so she took Chem II over the summer. Fortunately they used the same book and her access to the software stayed in place.

As far as the study guide your friend should look at getting an earlier edition study guide and textbook (sell the new textbook back when done or rent it).

[Orrex]

42. This was years ago, alas.

My complaint at the time was that nothing substantive changed in
The Complete Works of Shakespeare between Fall '98 and Spring '99, yet I had to buy a new edition with each semester.

That's when my friend pointed out that even less changed in Calculus during that same period, so it was a complete work of shake-down!

[HereSince1628]

48. A very unfortunate thing about literature texts is they are printed for the general public

who don't want things like paragraph numbering.

Paragraph numbering would remove the problem that results from different texts having different pagination.

Instructors need to be able to bring everyone to the same sentence/paragraph to reference a teaching element.

The publishers could relatively -easily- fix this by creating paragraph/verse number that follows every line-space separating the paragraph or verse.

As it is the forwards and introductions between editions vary in length and make referencing text between different editions of the same text very difficult

[Orrex]

50. That's true enough

Most college poetry texts will have the lines numbered, of course, but that doesn't cover the other subjects.

I've heard of even shittier tricks, such as demanding students buy the latest edition of whatever text, even when there's no change other than the number of blank end-pages!


Quite a racket.

[1939]

47. Still have my Surveying textbook

It cost $8.50 brand new from the bookstore.

It took me through Basic Surveying in fall 1958, Advanced Surveying in spring 1959, and Topographic Mapping in fall 1959.

[struggle4progress]

31. Campus bookstores may sometimes contribute to price inflation

I remember ordering a text for a class once and then, at the beginning of the semester, wandering the aisles there

I was somewhat surprised to find that the bookstore was selling only used copies of the book -- and at a considerably higher price than the publisher was then asking for new copies

[Blue_Tires]

33. wow...I would have guessed a much higher increase

and I say this as a university employee

[bhikkhu]

43. When I was in college I bought the previous editions, on Amazon

usually the cost was $10 or so, versus $120 on average for the newest edition. I think one time in one class I found an assignment posted that wasn't in my edition, and the teacher had no problem with my explanation and provided a work-around. The one class where I couldn't do that required the purchase of a "lecture notes" booklet, written by the professor, for $110, which I thought was a bit unethical.

My daughter now, on the other hand, has her first two years of college subsidized, including textbooks. I thought I'd help her out by finding good deals but she wasn't interested in the least - someone else was paying, so why bother? At least she turned the books back in to the college bookstore at the end. I still have all my books, which is a shelfload of reference material I've used from time to time - which is another difference. I took classes in things I wanted to use and remember, and get better at. Lots of kids just want the credits, and don't put much value in retaining or using knowledge.

[JCMach1]

57. Amazon offers rental services that are usually 1/2 to 1/4 of actual cost

If you want to saved $$$

[romanic]

59. It's ridiculous.

Most textbooks are copies of previous editions, and some of them aren't even utilized in the courses where they're required in the first place. More money-grubbing tactics by colleges and Academic fat cats.