Why an expensive text?

Quality being equal, is there a reason why a university will want to prescribed a more expensive textbooks for their courses.
I have been using amazon and other booksellers, *but for my last course the university decided *to customized the text. However the customize text was identical to the non-customized version except the university name was on the front cover. That change cost me approximately $150. I noticed for my next course the textbook is extremely expensive. The bookstore is run by DBS Direct. My guess is that the university get a percentage of the high sale value. There is no valid rational to me to have students*use the high price text when equal quality *and lower cost texts are available.

 

I feel your pain but I can top that - my son's O-chem class required a $308 text last semester. It was a new text, so we couldn't find any used texts on amazon etc. Luckily, he was able to get a Kindle version from his friend - for free.

As an instructor and an economist and a parent of two college students, this is a big topic for me. As an instructor, I use the old version ($50-70) of the text as long as I can so that students can get used texts. Some even use older versions ($20-30). Sometimes, when a new version comes out, the bookstore will require me to use a new one (at my CC, several instructors use the same text, and we have to somewhat agree). And it's not really about quality, but it's about teaching philosophy and the way an instructor likes to approach a class subject.

Some rental programs are helpful. My son and daughter also trade books among their friends for a low rate or free.

As an economist, I use a discussion question on college texts, demand and supply etc. It is an interesting process and disussion usually, with strong opinions. I think that text publishers must make a lot of money - I don't know about professors, but with the publish-or-perish mentality in most higher ed, I wouldn't be surprised if money (from publishers or university) is the driving factor. Paul Krugman comes out with a new text every 9-12 months, so that's one reason why I won't use his books.

Anyway, all you can do is make sure that the instructors in your program are aware that costs are an issue. It certainly is on my radar as an instructor.

 

Hmm... let's see. High margins. Captive audience. I can't imagine why they're insensitive (at best) or predatory (at worst). Market forces are certainly not in play regarding college textbooks.

 

Bookstores are for-profit, even if the schools they are placed in are not. Instructors are partly to blame, and the trend of customized texts have been around for a while, I was offered the "benefit" of doing so maybe 10 years ago. The big companies (Wiley, Pearson, etc) all have their books in digital format and allow instructors to cherry pick chapters from any text they carry to create the "perfect" book for the course. <gag> can you say "no resale value?" Reps would get angry when I tried to say WHY I wasn't interested. Eventually I quit trying to explain, and just ignored them.

Last semester I had a teacher who looked up the cost of our text and told us to buy the older edition, saving about $50. BRAVO! This semester I have an idiot who had the required text listed in the bookstore, I bought it for $180 plus shipping. Then, 2 days (yes) before class, she emailed us out the name of the book we needed. I asked about the bookstore book, and she said "oh, gosh, sorry that's the wrong one, I'll let them know" so I got to buy a NEW book for $212 plus EXPEDITED shipping of $10something. Clueless and inconsiderate. I don't care who they are, they are people with brains and making such careless stupid decisions is unacceptable. In this case, it was reflective of what was to come, and she's lived up to my characterization so far.

 

The Virginia Community College System is definitely working on the issue. I'm currently awaiting news of a grant to see if I qualify for an Open Education Resource project the VCCS is undertaking. In some cases, the textbook is just as much, if not more, than the tuition for the course. That's definitely not good news. For the grant I applied for, the VCCS reviewed its enrollment, and put together a list of courses which had the highest enrollment across the system. HIS 101 - Western Civilization, Part 1, was a course listed in my department, so I jumped on it. I'm hoping that I can have the opportunity to be awarded the grant to make the course more affordable. Even if I don't get the grant, I definitely plan on working towards making my courses more open. I also teach a political science course on the US Government, and I hope to turn that one into an open source class as well.

Going open resource is not as difficult in my institution because I'm the only political science guy, and 1 of 2 history guys. US History is definitely the "it" course with us, as we have about 3 students in US History for everyone 1 student in either World or Western. We currently use Alan Brinkley's "American History" with McGraw-Hill Connect. Connect is a series of online activities that students complete for homework. Since we've implemented the use of Connect, student performance has greatly increased, and we're a little hesitant to step away from that at the moment due to its success. Granted we can make our own activities (Lord knows I had to do it all the time as a high school teacher), it definitely takes time. Since I'm only in my first year at the college, I'm taking it slow, but once the summer hits, I'm going to start working on some of these things.

-Matt

 

Most non-profit public schools rip their students off like this. USF did it. Some of the text books I had to buy when I made $5.50 per hour cost over $100 and were unavailable used because the instructor's friend was a co-author of the book. The university bookstore had trash bins full of 3rd edition differential equations books when the 4th edition came out. The only difference was that it was two years newer and had most of the homework problem question numbers jumbled so you couldn't use it to do homework assignments. It was a racket to supplement the professor's income.

 

Sadly enough, I believe this completely (although we don't want to forget that the publishing company makes a profit as well). There are certain subjects like math, physics, chemistry, etc. where the basic knowledge hasn't changed in decades or even hundreds of years yet we still need new textbooks every year? Absurd.

 

Not that it helps, but I rescued several dozen books that my bookstore tossed for 100/200 gen eds. I used them to test out of about 51 credits. Clearly, beating them at their own game.

 

Wait, so the bookstores just throw away books? That seems a little backwards, don't you think?

-Matt

 

Cook, I'm interested in how you did that? Check the trash? Talk to the manager?

 

I noticed this week that one of the largest textbook stores adjoining the Berkeley campus (Ned's) is now 100% book rental.
Clearly a major trend, according to this helpful article: Best Textbook Rental Site | Cheap Textbook Rentals | Rent College Textbooks | What College is Right for Me Quiz | Grown Up Me

 

Oy vey. Renting textbooks?

 

The margins are crazy, and the bookstore is often the worst offender, marking thing up by 40% or more. The publisher's sales reps are good also, and will offer inducements (legally and ethically of course) to get a large adoption, sometimes going as far as getting the prof to re-write a version of the text, but more often throwing extras in for the students, like free extra books, free access to online content, test banks, software etc.

 

HUNDREDS from my community college each year. When new editions come out, they usually get a buy back from the publisher. There are exceptions, for instance, say a book comes out with the 4th edition in 2013, but my class is using 3rd edition this year and next. For the next year, I have to change since the store won't be able to get back issues, but now it's been more than 12 months so they can't get credit for the old ones. HUNDREDS. Go ask your bookstore manager, it's shocking.

 

There was a banquet table set up in the hallway in front of the bookstore. The books were in piles and left for whoever wanted them. My office used to be right next door, so I noticed them right away. I took many every semester for myself and to share with a few others. NO STUDENTS ever took them. In fact, I routinely watched students leave the bookstore with their old books in hand (no buy back for edition changes) and they tossed them in the trash. (I "rescued" a few this way too, but when no one was looking lol)

To add to Matt's answer, I forgot to say they NEVER buy back custom editions, so anytime there is a change, whatever inventory the bookstore has on hand is useless.

My bestie works for a k-12 school district that throws away entire classrooms when teachers retire or relocate. For about 5 years she arranged for me to get 100% of those items- including SETS of texts. Several subjects x 32, you can imagine this was a huge deal and took several trips in my Suburban to do this. But, I did happily, and since I used to belong to a big homeschool group, I always distributed it eagerly. There was a leadership change, and one of her bosses had an objection to homeschoolers having access to publicly purchased school stuff and required from then forward that everything must be thrown in the trash. (seriously, instead of educating children- mine or theirs, who cares?) So, that was my first experience with dumpster diving!!! My friend and I, after dark, collected the neatly packed boxes quickly and secretly after that. She changed districts last year, and I moved, so that opportunity has ended. I will say this, it's almost May, I promise you you'll find the SAME thing in your school districts if you are patient and consistent with checking. I promise. I can't tell you the boxes and boxes and boxes that will be thrown away of usable curriculum and supplies, and I'm not being a miser picking out notebooks and chalk. I mean to tell you that I have a huge anatomy guy and skeleton, nicely stocked chem lab, scales/measures, books, I could go on and on.

 

Except in situations where a faculty member wrote a text, or has a close relationship to the author, I can't imagine a faculty member being insensitive to the cost of a textbook.
I have personally rejected a book that I thought was the perfect book for a course because of price on more than one occasion. I have adopted texts that required a lot more teaching effort relative to others, including the creation of handouts, to lower costs to students.

Even when a faculty member collects royalties for a textbook, there are very few situations where they make much more than minimum wage for their efforts in writing and updating the book.

I teach accounting. Three years is about the most you can get out of a financial or intermediate accounting textbook. Debits have equaled credits for 500 years, but the accounting regulatory and standards environment are quite dynamic year-to-year. The ten percent of content that is different three years later is something students are expected to know but difficult to teach with a text based on how things used to be. New editions are often necessary, and textbook prices reflect the reduced period of sales of an edition.

Publishers like university-specific editions and coursepacks because it increases new textbook sales. However, at my university, faculty choose these special editions to SAVE the student money. We have a special version of a 200-level textbook that doesn't have all of the chapters present in the standard text and is substantially cheaper.

Most of the issues with textbook prices come from the publisher, or from the university when they get kickbacks from on-campus privately-run (e.g., Barnes & Noble) bookstores.

In defense of the publishers,

1. When you think about it, textbooks are sold in a rather limited market. With gen ed courses, there may be twenty or thirty different textbooks competing for adoption. With some upper-level specialized courses (e.g. financial derivatives), they simply don't sell that many textbooks.
   
2. Where content is unchanged, the students have changed. Few of today's students could handle the dryness of an algebra or calculus textbook from 30 years ago, although little has changed in the content covered. And a calculus book from thirty years ago would expect far less reliance on calculators.
   
3. some books are more expensive because the content DOES change every year (e.g., federal income taxation)
   
4. the publishers and authors don't see a dime from used book sales. New book sales decline drastically semester-by-semester after a new textbook is published.

 

Your position, though refreshing, is in the tiny minority. Someone should conduct a study- how many instructors/professors know the cost of their "required reading" list? I'll toss in a $1 to cover my bet of "fewer than 20%."