Ripoff 101: Gouging Students for Textbooks

Brad Lucier writes "The San Jose Mercury News covers a report by the California Student Public Interest Research Group entitled "Ripoff 101" about the high, and increasing, cost of university textbooks. The story notes several practices that force students to buy new books instead of used and quotes yours truly about how universities are insulated from the costs of books. Is electronic textbook publishing the way to go?"

Comments

Yup

[gregbaker]

I recently met with a textbook publisher about creating custom materials for a course. They were adament that there be rip-out exercises or something to make the textbook "consumable". Non-reusable means no used copies. Hooray!

Edition churn is also terribly annoying. It's very common to do just enough revising to change the page and section numbers, then release a new edition. It means students can't use older editions unless the instructor is willing to give sets of readings and exercises for each.

I'm sure you'd also be surprised that the utter crap that gets published. The bad textbooks that get as far as being required for a course are the cream of the crop. My bookshelf is sagging with review copies of truly useless texts. I'm sure they all retail for $100+ too.

I suspect publishers are in for a shock over the long term. They are counting on the fact that University faculty members are pretty set in their ways and don't change--they'll keep using the same expensive books. I think sooner or later they'll notice that publishers are leeches on the system and stop using so many required texts. The publishers will then realize that professors are even less likely to change back. (Changing back means admitting you were wrong--they are never wrong.)

We can all dream.

Re:Does calculus really change that much?

[gregbaker]

All the bastards do is introduce a few new questions at the end of the chapter and call it a new edition.

It's simple--it kills off the current used book pool. A new edition every few years keeps the number of used copies floating around at an acceptable level for the publishers. I have met employees from major publishing houses that are quite explicit about the need to keep the used textbook market in check.

Call the FBI!

[fm6]

In it it had a special section where you could go and check out a text book for a few hours. And for $0.15/page you could make copies of it. Or if you were really poor, walk a few blocks with it and make those copies for 5 cents.

Dude, that's illegal. And no, I don't care, either. But if any publisher reads your post, you can be sure that UoD is going to be told to exercise more control over textbook copying. And they'll comply too, rather than face expensive legal sanctions.