Buy used.
2
I teach a course at MIT, about the future of technology and society. I am the co-author of the textbook for it. I give the electronic copy free to students. Others can get it for $10 from http://www.whycantwe.org/. I agree that there's no reason why we should saddle students with high expenses to support a predatory publishing industry.
Henry Lieberman
Research Scientist
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
9
$180 per year for unlimited access if you have to use that one or others by that publisher:
https://www.cengage.com/unlimited/
1
I taught writing at DePaul University- I never made a buck off the sale of (then) grammars and readers.
I retired from “teaching” as penniless as I began.
Thanks a big fat lot to publishers and administrators that got the kickbacks while I “read” those terrific freshman essays and experiments in plagiarism.
Yikes...
4
How about professors requiring the text book they wrote?
3
Here is a way to not only get your textbooks for free, but classes as well
https://modernstates.org/freshman-year-free/#whyparticipate
You can take on-line classes offered by prestigious universities, like MIT, for free, and upon completion will be given a coupon that waives the fee for the appropriate CLEP test on the subject.
2
Service to the capitalist free enterprise system is an honor for university students and their teachers. As for the rest, tough luck suckers.
1
I write my own materials for every law course problem aolved
1
I just wanted you to know Professor Wu. I don't help any capitalist textbook corporation rip off my students. I hope you didn't think you were alone.
1
When students have access to online textbooks that permit application of digital tools to assist persons with visual or reading disabilities, learning and literacy can improve significantly for these students.
For example, the Visual Syntactic Text Formatting tool, available at liveink.com, has been shown to raise scores on tests in Social Studies and Science subjects, by 40 percent, while simultaneously strengthening students’ reading and writing skill even when the tool is not available, by 2 to 3 grade levels.
Here is a link to this article in Live Ink:
http://www.liveink.com/Walker/College_Textbboks.htm
1
I think I paid something similar for nursing/health texts in the 80’s .
We lived overseas in Europe with our military service and saw what their taxes provide..free healthcare, good education, and better infrastructure.
The middle class pays for it all twice with little that improves their quality of life and it’s a crap shoot if they can retire in comfort.
I hope voters show they expect more than tax breaks for the super rich.
1
As a former nursing arts instructor; the booksellers from major companies would send me hundreds of student textbooks free. Yet the student package that was required for classes came to over $1000 dollars back in the 1990’s. It was such a cringe worthy situation for financially strapped young adults with no gainful employment but studying in hopes of acquiring a high salaried nursing position.
Of course I gave away the textbooks to my students. It offset some of the tuition costs. But textbooks are a terrible problem. Editions change so your textbook “used “doesn’t match up page for page either if you try to save funds that way.
And apparently even with tech the publishers and schools still massage each other’s finances. IMHO you should throw the textbook industry under the bus. One other way to screw the workers of this country and their college age kids. Professors don’t have much influence in this trade.
3
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
Harvard can catch up!
Yeah, but this is chump change compared to how they're getting ripped off by the previous generation in terms of the cuts to education that have happened in the past two decades. It's the reason adjuncts, who are paid peanuts, have to depend on online homework systems because they have neither the time nor any financial incentive to grade papers.
Don't blame professors for a system rigged by corporations and a lack of government funding.
4
Well, there is no doubt about why Gregory Mankiw is teaching economics rather than ethics, is there?
4
Some institutions of higher learning support and celebrate their professors who make high quality, no cost/low cost (#NoLo) texts available to their students. Here's an example, Professor Hamish Lutris at Capital Community College in Connecticut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RKC38TKCdQ
Gregory Mankiw, the $42 million man and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, was once posed the following question: "Would you ever write an open-source textbook? Why, or why not?" His terse and snide reply was revealing: "Let me fix that for you: Would you keep doing your job if you stopped being paid? Why, or why not." I am sure that Prof. Mankiw is exceedingly well paid by Harvard, and he seems unaware that the academic world is full of uncompensated writing. I wonder how he can be a good economist if his theories assume that all people are as callous and selfish as he is.
3
While text books that are expensive, and not even necessary sometimes, the real problem is colleges hire teachers who cannot teach, mainly because while they know the subject matter well their delivery is poor.
This conundrum can be resolved by putting the material on line which is suitable for most courses. The online course would be a combination of video and audio with the audio part using professional narrators who have good diction and are trained to speak. Below is an example of how well a basic electrical engineering subject matter is delivered.
Using online courses will not take away the jobs of the professors. It will make it different because they will have to spend less time on preparing the lesson and more time on lighting the fire in the bellies.
When I was doing my MBA after completing graduate work in engineering the school made me take an intermediate course in economics. I had found the basic course in the engineering school terribly boring, especially because the teacher was boring. The economics professor in the MBA school was different. He would start each class with a magic trick that he would somehow tie into the subject matter he was going to teach that day. He got me hooked. Today I read economics books and article with the same enthusiasm and ease that I had when as a teenager I leafed thru Playboy and Hustler.
Try this link on electrical engineering basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc979OhitAg&list=PLWv9VM947MKi_7yJ0_FCfzTBXpQU-Qd3K
1
AGREE AGREE AGREE. The publisher puts out a new edition, but the professor doesn’t have to use it. Is it really a better learning tool?
Odd that the writer blames professors and textbook authors and doesn't lay any responsibility on publishers.
For one of my classes I was able to assign two good texts that are in the public domain and available for free on https://archive.org/
I encourage students and especially profs to make use of this free resource.
There is something we have to learn from India or China - how to make inexpensive textbooks. I remember, 20 years ago as a med. student how a hardcover " Grey's Anatomy " from the UK cost me less than a paperback here!
" a touch of greed"
Ha! Far more than a touch.
1
Thanks, Tim. Once again, you have uncovered a deep capitalist conspiracy!
Worst of all are the professors who assign their own books.
2
I recall a university T.A. in a French class offhandedly mentioning that in France students often stole books assigned for a course. "Qui ne vole pas est volé," he said. At the time that seemed shocking. Now, we all have our pockets picked in just about every arena.
"Textbooks are too expensive" it says just beneath the headline. I didn't need to read the rest. Who doesn't already know this? Anyone who's been to college or is the parent of a college student is fully informed on this matter. Next story, please.
You want to know what happened to my textbooks after college? Two of them are propping up the very monitors I am using to write this message.
Having taught law for 30 years, I know how texts evolve. And the best-seller as an Econ book? No surprise.
It's capitalism.
Those who command market advantage in the academy then capitalize on it.
Education is about knowledge, and about money.
I was paid much more than my up-campus colleagues because of my market value, even though they had to teach longer hours and probably did better education than most of us in the lucrative law teaching biz.
Don't blame professors. Blame capitalism in its stupid mode.
1
How many required textbooks are written by the professor teaching a course?
Had that happen a few times
My complaint back in the early 1960's when I was in college. Nothing has changed. (This isn't the first time since then that I've read opinion pieces - or other - commenting on these high text book prices).
Just wondering how the text books are priced in other universities in the Western countries?
1
I retired in 2013 after a 43 year faculty career in a business school. Publishers typically produced a new edition every two or three years. Their business model assumed that students would purchase new books in the first semester of publication and most would buy used books for the following three to five semesters. Because publishers make nothing on used books, they charged three to five times what those books would be priced at if all students bought new books. Absent the Internet, that model was viable.
I recognized decades ago that the concepts my students needed to gain from texts were more or less constant. As a result, my syllabi listed any of the three most recent editions as course texts. I relied on media reports tor current examples.
Many of my students attended a class or two before deciding to remain in the course and buy a text. I was able to tell them that they could successfully use any recent introductory text from any publisher. The topic headings assigned for each class could be matched to chapter titles in any of the common subject matter texts.
Once the Internet became a source of used books, some of my students took delight in seeing who could find the least expensive useable text. One student acquired an earlier edition for $5 shipping cost and found it satisfactory.
The marketplace has changed, but publishers seem reluctant to adapt their business model. The long-term result likely will be more and more professors relying on other than text books.
4
My daughter and her roommates, all in a graduate nursing school, were flummoxed to discover the addition of several "digital access code" requirements added to their already large text book budgets. My understanding is that these particular codes lead to tests and quizzes on the material studied. I am sure that makes grading much easier for the professors since the results are beautifully formatted, instantly tabulated, and accessible. However, somebody is making a LOT of money on the backs of these students for the sake of efficiency and bells and whistles. It makes me wonder if we need to bring back the mimeograph machine and the classroom pop-quiz.
5
As one of the authors of a history textbook that went through many editions, I can say that none of us had any control over its price. Publishers made that decision.
6
Writing a good textbook takes enormous time and effort, so maybe we should do it for free? That's not how this works.
6
Let's see, according to a site I just consulted, tuition and fees to attend Columbia amounted to $74,199 for 2018. And what concerns Professor Wu is textbooks? That amount to a whopping $1,000?
Here's hoping Professor Wu investigates the remaining $75,000. As an American immigrant to France, I recently discovered that they spend $12,850 per student for university. That's only about a thousand more than my home state California spends, but while here tuition amounts to $300, there they allow UC's to add an additional $50,000 to the bill. And that's all the difference. Universities here face real budgeting. Universities in the US have a blank check.
10
This happened to me years ago when I textbook I had been using for years (basically the only good one in the field) suddenly doubled in price. It was not a new edition. I suspect that it could be chalked up to that old fashioned word: greed.
2
If you're paying $50K per year in tuition, an extra $1,500 for textbooks just disappears into the student loan. But if you're a working parent trying to get your community college associate's degree, the textbooks can cost more than the tuition fees. Some CCs, like Bristol CC in Massachusetts, actually offer entire degree programs with free ("OER") textbooks - you can even limit your course search to only courses with free textbooks in their online course schedule system. The state of Florida has strongly pushed its public universities to look for free textbooks. Kudos to everyone working in the OER movement!
5
I taught my way through grad school and always tried to specify 'edition x+ [plus]' for required text(s). I initially stated the minimum edition on the syllabus but was admonished to not do so by the Chair.
I also encouraged students to sign up (then posted online at a campus used text auction site) where current students tended to pay less than 50% for the "antiquated" texts... thus halving the effective price for both buyer & seller ;-).
But the truth is, most students could probably (and knew of a few that claimed they did) find replacement material (sans the practice sets) for free online to succeed in the (undergrad) courses.
1
A university professor for 35 years, selecting required course materials was always a challenge, pedagogically and ethically. The textbook racket became increasingly repulsive with all the come-ons publishers use to entice instructors: desk copies for self and for teaching assistants, plus "prefab" course outlines, PowerPoint presentations, discussion and review questions, assignments, examinations with answer keys. More instructors started choosing textbooks based on how much these "ancillary materials" reduced their workloads, with students paying the added costs.
Then there were instructors doing backflips to justify assigning texts they'd authored in every course, solely to meet publisher-imposed quotas or boost their royalties. With a good text, truly better than the alternatives, this is somewhat understandable, though it still seems exploitative. When I co-authored a text that my department then required in several multi-section courses, I refused *all* royalties, instead donating them to the university's scholarships fund. The snark I received from some faculty members spoke volumes.
By the end of my career I'd done away with assigned texts in most of my courses, opting for a mix of library and online materials, extensive topic outlines and notes, and course web pages pointing students to additional information sources. A little more work, but student learning actually increased. So did student appreciation.
8
I taught as an adjunct at a prestigious school. I had to purchase my own copy of the text I was teaching from with my own money. When I asked the school to place a copy of the book on reserve in the library I was told I could put my own personal copy there. There was absolutely zero support for low income students or recognition of their needs. There were so many issues in that department, and these are kids paying extremely high tuition to be there. I lost all faith in academia in this country.
5
As a professor at a leading US private university, I try to stay sensitive to the shocking costs my students endure in their preparation for a professional life. I teach 3 distinct classes, plus special project seminars, and I have never assigned a textbook in any of them. Though I do recommend my students look into ways to download texts (for free) wherever possible. Instead, I assemble a collection of readings in PDF format from open sources easily found on line or in my own files. This usually takes me about a day or 2 to put together, and I'm pretty sure this is part of what they pay me to do. But, I will mention that I am persistently hounded by agents from textbook publishers wanting me to assign their texts, usually with the lure of a free textbook for me, and with most of the offers just being a slightly updated version of a text I already own. Some days I imagine this must be what it feels like in medical offices where pharmaceutical sales agents keep pushing tweaked versions of the latest greatest cure all drugs. It's a constant challenge to resist the offers. But, then I think of my students again, the debt burdens they own, and the decision is easy.
6
I support getting rid of, or lowering, "required" textbooks. I've never bought textbooks for any of my classes and got by due to studying with friends, reviewing lecture notes, and looking up concepts I didn't understand on Google. It was much easier and more convenient than lugging around a textbook.
1
It is NOT TRUE that college professors ignore textbook costs, albeit perhaps some law faculty do. Our administrators constantly ask that we choose rentals (at half price), use open access (free) texts, or even forego textbooks altogether. In addition, we older profs went to UG school when it hardly cost anything (at least if one went to a public state university in the 1970s). We are all appalled by the costs of education today. The price of ignorance remains important as well.
3
I'm a foreign language professor and I have never assigned a text that cost more than $20 . . . on Amazon. In my case, it's the university bookstores that attempt to rip students off by charging them full price.
4
Let's talk about introductory calculus books. Calculus has not changed in decades, unlike most introductory science courses. Maybe the student audience has changed, slowly. ∂But the market is huge and competitive. It really is expensive, I'm sure, to have full-color diagrams on every other page, pictures of dead and living mathematicians (and their bios), worked examples of every variation of a method, hundreds of not-necessarily-distinguishable exercises in every section (not merely chapter), and a dozen or two dozen consultants who read and verify everything in detail, as well as preparing separately charged solution books, or online exercises with programs that sometimes don't understand correct answers. And to do it all over every two years to prop up sales.
Then there's the high percentage of profit.
But why? Much of this is simply not necessary. The frequent new editions are only to keep sales high. No one really needs that except those who profit by it. The professors are caught in a bind, because producing your own textbook is (a) hard, (b) very time-consuming, (c) boring as heck for most professors, who can be doing interesting mathematics instead, and (d) likely to be not very good. (Just being by an MIT professor is not a guarantee of quality.)
I leave you to draw your conclusions.
5
Here at the U. of Oxford (England), all college purchase multiple copes of required texts/readings so that students need not buy textbooks. It’s a lovely thing not to buy and have to resell at a small fraction of the original cost and very sensible system US universities could easily emulate.
4
@Dr_No
I attended the 1st US Land Grant college in the 1980s. Land Grant schools were mandated to serve residents of that state and have tuition, room and board that would be paid by the student working a job at the university. The university required several copies of all required textbooks to be in the dept library as well as the university library. I purchased 3 books because they would have great value in my career. I still have them and still used them.
Sadly, dept libraries are gone now and so are many of the reserved textbooks. Several of the professors have offered up their personal libraries and others banded together to write open source books that are now used in many set classes. Exercise sets and labs are free downloads.
The easiest way for Profs to address these high textbook costs is to lecture from older editions and update anything new and important in their lectures in various ways, such as a handout or reference to a new article in the literature. Many new editions are virtually identical to earlier ones. Older editions can be found in various ways, even on Amazon. The savings for students can be huge.
7
Do students not keep any of the books? Are they that useless? That was not the case with many of my college texts back in the "good old days" (the 1960s).
2
What was particularly irksome to me, and later my sons, was that when students sold a used book back to the bookstore, we were offered a small fraction of the original cost. Sometimes the bookstore refused to buy the book back because it was not going to be used in the next semester. This is clearly a racket. Why are the colleges and universities not organizing against the publishers to stop this gouging? It is of a piece with the high interest rates charged for college loans. Now the Secretary of Education wants another bureaucracy created because she can’t understand the entire student loan morass. What is wrong with this country that we allow our students to be ripped off in this fashion in pursuit of an education? And a Secretary of Education who doesn’t understand how her own agency works?
4
@Miriam
There are many Secretaries that have no clue how their agency works and worse they do not know what it is supposed to do. It didn't start with Trump and will not end with him. It is all about paying back big money supporters. The EPA is a clear example for the past 20 years. FEMA is another.
1
What a difference from 1967 costs at Kent State University where books and tuition for undergraduate and graduate school were a dream.
I feel terrible at the way students are treated in today’s America.
Student costs here in France are non existent and all emphasis is given to providing the student an opportunity to learn.
The United States has fallen behind in morality, led by Trump, and shows no sign of recovering.
6
I began teaching at an intro course at a liberal arts university in New York in 1992. At that time there were three texts used in English for the Intro course to my subject. Now it's down to two. The number of study guides, digital supplements and, workbooks and other kinds of materials a professor can add has exploded. They can add up to over $500 for a humanities class.
From the beginning I required the minimum text, wrote my own study guide that I photocopied for free for students, and left supplemental materials on reserve in the library. I also left at least one reserve copy of the text in the library for students who were cash strapped, I also recommended older editions, and sharing books. Like many student's today, I was a first generation college student and worked my way through school. Taking the subway could be a luxury so I also relied on the library to fill in the gaps of what I couldn't afford and always do as much as I can for my students.
Diversifying not just the students but the professors and administrators in all types of higher ed, and not limiting so much of the hiring to Ivy League graduates could address some of these hidden issues that are critical to student success, both in school and after graduation.
6
While working full time as swing shift nurse and full time college on scholarship, I needed extra books and spent everything to get them. Didn’t have any money for food and other than the cereal at dorm no meals. For dinner break just walked the hospital halls. I found a dime just enough for vending machine coffee, hot cocoa or chicken broth. Best meal I have ever had salty hot chicken broth. That was 1963 and now I do not know how people putting themselves through college can make it. No wonder education debt is soul crushing.
2
When I went to college after finishing high school I was surprised at how few professors could actually teach. They all had PhDs, knew the subject matter but just could not teach. Colleges should focus on how they can get teachers that can teach, hold the students' attention, light the fire in their bellies.
Text books are not the issue. Professors are.
PS: I have two graduate degrees, on in engineering, and an MBA.
3
At the community college where I Chair the English department, we some time ago moved over to the use of easily accessible and free OERs (open educational resources), where perfectly fine rhetorics are found, rather than continue on with the price gauging game of publishers like Cengage and Barnes & Noble (which now essentially runs our college bookstore). My point is that alternatives to many texts do exist and are utilized by those of us in higher education who are hired to primarily teach and to actually know and engage with students as opposed to those professors who see themselves as something other, comfortably separate from the lives of their students.
3
The author is painting with broad strokes here. Many professors who are colleagues of mine do everything they can to keep costs down, and I have tried to follow suit wherever possible. In some of my classes, I use textbooks. In some I don't. It depends on a variety of factors. Can I reasonably teach the material using documents that I alone curate? Are there free options? Sometimes I can, but as a non-tenured junior faculty member, I do not always get to choose what I teach, so I do not always have that luxury. Sometimes I learn of my teaching assignment days before the class starts. The problem lies not with the professors who are overworked and underpaid, but with the system as a whole, which prioritizes administrators salaries over hiring more faculty, and decreasingly can rely on public funds to make ends meet, leading to heavier workloads for faculty and more of these difficult decisions. In an ideal world, I would never assign a textbook, because I would have the time to do the work to adequately prepare for all the courses I teach, and there is no question I would leverage that work to save my students money. After all, I do not ever see a dime from the use of that textbook I assign. But that is an ideal world I do not live in, and I do not suspect it it is my future, either.
5
I use a textbook that is well written and illustrated. Students pay $10 for a semester of online access. They get access to supplemental materials and the text for the semester. Easy.
As a lifelong student myself the textbooks are overpriced, and if the instructor wants to use the text as supplemental or reference why buy it. As an instructor in nursing, management, and informatics, my per class payment isn't even a livable wage. If I write, review, or consult on written work, it is basically not even worth my time. A 12 Hour Shift in the local ED pays more than working at the university. The textbook companies’ exorbident profits far exceed the need for basic introductory textbooks in classes even as temporary reference that is required. Textbooks that I recommend are digital copies, utilizing journals, and other materials are just as good. Fundamentals and basic science can be taught with older texts. Why kill trees for information that will be republished every five years simply for profit with only 15 to 20% changes.
3
Some schools add to the problem by tacking on surcharges. The bookstore at the school I just retired from was run for a long time by the Student Association (it is now contracted out). The surcharges they added to all textbooks over the years accumulated enough money to substantially fund the construction of a new student exercise facility. Students "helping" students. Go figure.
4
Good column. Professorial ethics may have a role to play, but let's put the blame where it mainly belongs - on the publishers who set the prices for the books they sell. Forty years ago when book prices were more likely to be $30 than $300, there were still professors who became millionaires through their royalties, and many who were able to meaningfully supplement their incomes, though not to this extent. Yes, general inflation has made textbook price increases inevitable, but not that much. Professors could be incentivized to write texts even if their royalties were reduced by 2/3, commensurate with a 2/3 reduction in book price. Publishers could still do well, especially since modern computerization has reduced printing, editorial and other costs that publishers incur.
But if Professors shouldn't bear most of the blame for the problem, they can, as the column suggests, be part of the solution. If professors, or better still schools, decide that they will not assign any book that costs in excess of, say, $90, prices would come tumbling down.
5
Text book are--in law school--too expensive. But I don't think many law professors are helping rip off students. Many do their best to moderate costs so that students need not spend more than $50 to $100 for a class.
One step law professors take to keep costs down is to use an edition other than the most recent one and to encourage purchases of used books. One colleague I know refused to use one particular text because it changed editions so often, which makes using an old edition difficult..
But even with less frequent edition changes there are challenges to getting the needed number of a partcular older edition. In one class, where there were not so many students, I bought a dozen copies of the older edition and loaned copies to those students that could not find it.
Also, one cannot use older editions forever. Even if the substantive content changes little, at some point the edition is obvously so old (e.g., faxes instead of emails in problems, francs or marks instead of euros) that students are likely to see the book, the class and the professor as out-of-date.
The new electronic features also make using older editions more difficult and expensive.
3
I asked the publisher of a textbook I had written about the high price of the book. He explained his point of view, which took into account the used book market. The book would probably be re-used at least two or three times by successive classes. The publisher earns only on the first sale, of the new book. So, he explained, the high original price reflected the expectation of two or three later sales of the used book -- on which he makes nothing. That may be little comfort for the student who has to buy the first, new edition. But s/he is probably able to resell the used book at the end of the semester and recoup at least part of the original cost.
4
What about requiring students to subscribe to journals, magazines or newspapers so the teacher can get a free subscription?
I’ve never heard of this—what kind of class would these subscriptions be required for?
Timely and important article for sure but as a textbook author myself (Contemporary Clinical Psychology published by John Wiley and Sons which I am updating for a 4th edition) I can confidently state that authors earn almost nothing for their efforts with publishing and updating their textbook(s). In fact, I make more money seeing just a few psychotherapy patients on the side than I do each year in royalties after publishing 23 books in total. There just isn't any money in this business for authors unless they have totally cornered a very large market and that is very rare indeed.
4
I write advanced technical books for professionals that can also be used in academia. My publishers have never given me control over the price of the books, and they usually want to pay minimum royalties. For other authors in this situation, the ethics discussion of price is about the publishing company, not us. Used book sales do not produce royalties, and on top of that, unfortunately, there are many websites that offer downloads of the books (illegally as it were). This makes it unattractive to authors to invest an inordinate amount of effort to produce a tome that generates insignificant revenue. The public service idea is a good suggestion, but to encourage authors, I suggest the following model. Offer the book electronically and freely, say, through a website. Provide a "donations" link. If students, professors and others find the book to be useful, they can donate a small amount of money to the author--effectively a crowd funding model. If enough people donate, this offsets the insignificant royalties and the loss of royalty income from illegal downloads. This might be enough to encourage authors to write more. Of course, if people do not donate, the authors might continue down the standard path of publishing that leads to overpriced books...
1
Everywhere I look these days I find reasons to be glad I went to college before so much in our lives became "monetized". I was a nonresident student at the University of Michigan in the late 60s and found I could pay all my expenses and have some left over on a student job paying $2.20 an hour for about 20 hrs a week. Cut into my study time some, sure. But I made it through. Where's the state support these days? It was what made my education possible back then.
3
As an English instructor, I can find free online resources for my students fairly easily, but there are compromises. My students will miss much of the most challenging contemporary material--material that is written by people who still want and deserve to be paid for their work. My syllabus will also likely be more racially and culturally homogenous, since the further back in time you go in the literary canon, the easier it is to find free material. Moreover, since the free material is usually digital, students often miss out on the experience of reading physical books. Books give us a sense of shared community, when we're all "on the same page" together, reading and discussing a text. With digital resources, I can't even be sure that my students are reading the material with me. Students can also write in a book, which encourages critical engagement. I know there are annotation platforms for digital reading, but these are often tricky to use, cumbersome and of course they take time to master--that's time taken away from critical reading and analysis.
6
I agree with Mr. Wu that the textbook industry is exploiting students, but I am also concerned that as we begin to look to and embrace alternatives, we may be selling our students short intellectually. Mr. Wu proposes a hybrid, patchwork approach that despite the best efforts of places like OpenSTAX is going to wind up being almost as heavily monetized as the system we have now, with even more fingers in the proverbial pot. As Mr. Wu himself states, the upshot of these proposed changes is likely to be "a Netflix-style subscription service." Such a service would mean that students get less access than they had before and at the end of the semester, they will lose it all. With lower cost, you get lower quality. On top of all that, the whole thing puts professors on their heels, taking time away from teaching and devoting it instead to yet another administrative chore. Don't get me wrong, I think the whole thing should be free. The publishing industry is an absolute travesty, but it's not going to reform without significant pressure. A better approach to the problem of textbook cost would be to fold the cost of books into the cost of college tuition itself and let the institutions fight it out with the publishers for affordability. They would have better leverage than professors or students, anyway.
5
I used open source materials supplemented by inexpensive workbooks and pamphlets. Most textbooks, if edited for content, would be about a third as long as they are now, maybe a fourth. The writing is genuinely terrible. And for this treat, students had to spend hundreds of dollars.
I used official textbooks the first semester I taught. After that, with a lot of research, I found the information the students needed for very little money and was able to stay on or ahead of the curve in terms of the latest information.
1
That’s great if one’s in a field where this is possible, but for a lot of fields, there are no free textbooks available. I’ve tried to cobble together the equivalent on my own, but it’s really tough & a lot of work, & the results aren’t as good as having a single, coherent textbook...
2
Of course they're ripping off students...that's American capitalism right? At least Professor Wu is willing to admit it, though I wonder how he'll be treated by colleagues. Just like universities rip off students with the exorbitant tuition they charge, abetted by government-backed bonds.
3
I'm a textbook author (Prescott's Microbiology, 11th edition). I just reviewed the microbiology offering on OpenSTAX using the link in this opinion piece. I read through the one area of my particular expertise (Archaea) and found several errors. You can be sure that major publishers have engaged authors with top credentials who get it right.
12
Surely there is a class on a university campus titled American Inequality where the textbook is available for a paltry $300.
2
This is America. Everything is a scam.
Textbooks are the same kind of scam as healthcare: the middle man (publishers and insurance companies) profit by extorting the gap between the providers (universities and clinics) and receivers (students and patients).
The required courses I teach at my uni in Japan have textbook cost limits. I wish they were a bit higher, but I'm glad they're there.
3
Hey, take three semesters of calculus and get to use the same book all three semesters!
A more serious way that faculty help the university fleece students is by giving them passing grades they don't deserve and, thereby, prolonging the payment of tuition toward degrees they will never earn.
Yes the price of the books is stunning.
But you overlooked the main scam that you are guilty of.
Liberal Art colleges are money pits, where kids show up, hopeful of a career that will lift them in life, only to be up to their necks in college debt that they cannot repay with the phoney balloney degrees you give them.
No one gets hired with a Gender Studies major, or a Phylosophy major. 8th ave is littered with kids begging for change who showed up with an Arts Major from Bacwatter U, only to find out no one will take them serious, they end up destitute in the street, the smart ones end up serving me drinks at some local pub.
I used to hire a Librarian PhD as an admin, she had at least 20 jobs in her resume, only 3 as a Librarian that happened soon after she graduated and realized no library would ever pay her enough to repay the college debt, she's was in her 40's by then.
I also had a Nutritionist Major, also as an admin, apparently the only job she got with her degree was receptionist at Jenny Craigh.
I also had a Mathematics PhD, we made her the accounts payable person, also in deep trouble with her college debt.
Your schools should have a warning for kids - 'warning, this degree will not get you a job and the college debt will still need to be repaid. Take this at your own risk'.
I tell you, your degrees are a scam so much larger than the price of a philosophy book.
4
Few institutions as corrupt as universities. The faculty decide how well to treat themselves and nobody can tell 'em otherwise. Power corrupts and teaching corrupts absolutely.
1
Avoid using standard textbooks if possible--they are mostly canned knowledge.
Make your own readers. They can usually be created at a fraction of the cost of the textbook(s).
Give loaner copies of the readers for students who can't afford even that cost.
Generate your own problem sets.
Never penalize or humiliate a student for not being able to afford a book--problem solve.
Use the internet to create a list of multi-media resources and free article and texts.
Avoid like the plague articles from websites that believe in enclosing information like the NY Times. It's mostly trivial.
1
The for profit bookstore is a huge part of the problem...
@SW If the bookstore makes no profit, how do you expect them to stay in business? Not to mention, students have many stores online where they can buy books.
2
My son went to a top university and skirted purchasing textbooks with one exception. Professors who select expensive books, especially those they've penned themselves, are ridiculous.
1
Outside of hospitals, there is no bigger ripoff than College textbooks.
Noy how you really rip off students. I taught at a university for 12 years as an adjunct professor. Most professors complained if they had to teach more than one course a term. The course met 3 times a week for one hour. This one professor had a sign on his office door. “ office hours @2 to 12:15 MWF. Professors would take off during the day to go to a Walmart or pick up their wives. It’s ridiculous if calculate their hourly salary. Their main excuse for teaching only one course a term. Research. Which is total you know what.
Why not simply scan the book and return it unmarked.
Or copy it.
Look at the salaries of the professors assigning the books.
It is organized crime and extortion.
Former Professor and
Vietnam Vet
This is an odd column. Attack the professors. You know, there are far, far bigger fish to fry in the education cost problem than text book prices. Hard to take this seriously...and it makes me a bit suspicious as to the motives. Surely, compared to the tuition, textbook prices are a drop in the bucket. But it does give you an excuse to accuse professors of "ripping of students." Huh?
7
This has been going on for years. $200 textbooks that you throw away after college. Gee, I really need that old Biochemistry book now; especially since I can't find a job except driving for Uber!!!
1
This is your take, Mr Wu, on the financial problems college students face now? Seriously?
Stack up the price of textbooks against the staggeringly high student debt levels.... Not even close.
6
Ebook versions?
2
One of the joys of academia a certain kind of faux populism. Prof. Wu offers us a textbook case of textbook populism. If he protests against a textbook costing over $200, then he must really care about students, right? Meanwhile, the annual tuition and fees for the law school that pays him his salary is $75,898:
https://www.law.columbia.edu/admissions/graduate-legal-studies/tuition-fees-and-financial-aid
Really, the cost of law school textbooks is the problem?
7
The higher-ed publishing industry is an oligopoly with 4 companies cornering the market, in cahoot with the universities. McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Cengage, Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt. They need to be investigated.
3
Thank you for airing this topic, Prof. Wu.
I remember telling my students once that their intro philosophy text was using an inferior and supplanted translation of Descartes.
At $ 150 a book (7 years ago), the publisher could at least have used the standard Cottingham translation. Bloody cheapskates.
3
Hey Tim: if writing a good textbook is not remunerative and yet they cost $250, who's making the money?
Also, I assigned your "Curse of Bigness" to my EMBAs this semester. It's a terrific, thought-provoking text.
That said, where should they apply to get your refund? Please post an address in the replies. Thanks!
2
It’s the publishing companies that are making the money. Most of them are now major conglomerates. Though in their defense, so few students purchase books new these days that that’s why they have to hike the prices... But the result is a death spiral.
2
It appears that academics are capitalists with their money. And are socialists about everybody else's money.
1
As a law school student, after my first year I understood when a professor was simply being lazy by assigning the latest edition of a textbook, nicely shrink wrapped and available for $350 at the school bookstore, and not fastidious. Never buy from the bookstore! Maybe it doesn’t work with other graduate programs, but you do get the knack of how to succeed with the “outdated” versions that can be gotten for [relatively] cheap used on Amazon. I also became, for the rest of my law school years, a used textbook dealer of sorts and if the market was “hot” (I.e. no/few used copies available) for a certain book that I happened to be getting rid of, I sometimes made a profit on a book that I myself had bought used. It is insane though, how much the books cost. And when I was moving out of the apartment I lived in during those years the books that couldn’t be sold went out to the alley with a “FREE” sign.
22
@Yaronit Here at the U. of Oxford (England), the libraries of all colleges purchase multiple copes of required texts/readings so that students need not buy textbooks and can simply check out or use books they need for the term. It’s a lovely thing not to buy and have to resell at a small fraction of the original cost and very sensible system US universities could easily emulate.
4
@Dr_No Here it is up to individual faculty to put books “on reserve” at the library but when you have a course with multiple sections and hundreds of students storage space becomes an issue as it does for textbook rental schemes
1
@Yaronit - "... I Sometimes made a profit ...."
1
I have stopped using textbooks 18 years ago. It is a rip off business. In 2002 or so, one well-known publisher rep asked me why I am not using a textbook and said she will fund a training workshop to Aspen, Colorado. That is nothing but bribing and asked her to leave the room.
I use Harvard cases, but they also rip student with $4.25 per case. The marginal cost is 0. I need to find a way to get rid of those. Unfortunately, Harvard name allows faculty access to companies. Students believe using Harvard cases improves education. Time for Harvard to stop extorting cases that costs them zero.
1
Writing as an academic who spent more than 40 years teaching university students, I would like to agree with much of what Mr. Wu says.
However, two important qualifications are called for. First, quality (and, we hope, less expensive) alternative textbooks are relatively easy to identify for large-market introductory courses, but significantly less so for specialized upper-division classes.
Second, there is little doubt that bargain shopping for textbooks to assign inhibits innovation in teaching. The instructor who seeks to breathe fresh air into the content and/or organization of a course needs to set aside the big sellers and their innumerable clones, and look for the work of colleagues who are similarly dissatisfied with traditional approaches. Since these pedagogical (and probably methodological) outliers have so far found smaller markets, they are likely to be more expensive.
There are enough motivations to keep using the same or other traditional, conventional texts (along with only modestly-updated yellowed notes), including the fact that teaching doesn't make all that much difference in faculty evaluations. We should be careful about adding economizing to those motivations.
3
I use a combination of free texts available through my university and readings from the primary literature, which students can also get free from the library website. Although not suitable for many 1st and 2nd year courses which cover core principles I think we should have 3rd and 4th year students reading more of the primary literature. If well chosen these papers help move them deeper into their fields and are free to download.
1
My daughter's philosophy professor at a small college required his students to buy his 80 page book for $99. It was so impossible to read that most literature PhD's could not make it through two pages. A year later, I put a 50 cent price sticker on it and mailed it to him.
2
Textbook publishers are not price gouging. To compare the industry to the pharmaceutical industry is ridiculous. One cannot publishing a technical textbook for $100 because of the high development expenses including payments to multiple chapter authors, royalties for edition authors, editors, copy-editors, proofreaders, indexers, printers, permissions, web infrastructure, online hosting fees, etc. These expenses can total 50% of the list price of the book. However, all books are sold at a discount, (Amazon takes 50%.) After all, the publisher is lucky to clear a 5-10% net profit. The survival of the publishing industry is critical to the US and because of Amazon, it's a challenge. Students should receive help purchasing textbooks, but blaming textbook publishers for the problem is completely uninformed.
7
Well said. Publishers make no money and the reason there are only a few standing is because everyone else went under or merged in an effort to stay afloat.
2
Well, I'm a postdoc and instructor at a university. To a large extent I agree with you. Online homework largely exists to make educational companies rich while universities claim to be innovative and keeping tuition down (tuition down, not the cost of books or homework). Online homework systems are often subpar, and the homework questions are wimpy, especially when you just click a bubble on a computer. There is no opportunity for students to express their reasoning or plot a graph, as for that you need to hire a grader.
But keep in mind this isn't entirely the instructors' fault. The universities are switching to online homework to save themselves money. Partially because state universities are underfunded. If you don't want to pass the cost onto students, the older adults need to pay their darn taxes! Also, instructors have a lot more going on with teaching other courses and research and don't have a lot of time to select a textbook.
That said, for my classes I post my lecture notes online. I don't see why more professors don't do that (other than they are too busy with research and other responsibilities). It helps for me to have a textbook to follow, but I don't see why my own lecture notes and problems, for free, can't replace the textbook. And a good grader replace the online homework like in the old days. Maybe my time and the grader costs some money. But we can fund that via taxes instead of students. I'll keep the cost reasonable.
3
Great opinion professor Wu. What is puzzling is that many of the books are on subjects that are in cutting edge areas and do not warrant constant, sometimes yearly, updates. For example, economics or statistics have not changed over many years and the same basic theories are being thought regardless of which edition is used. Same goes for math, and for many other areas of study. Kudos to you for considering your students and being ethical in your classes. I used to think that some professors received a kickback from the publisher or author, and that may be the case.
2
SO appalled when the $200 Health Information Technology book has actual grammatical and factual errors and that $80 access code buys outdated links to research and questions that can’t be answered from the book. Also, the answers are all over the internet so the teacher grading the assignments is just pointless. Part of teaching is creating relevant assessments. So LAZY.
2
Speaking of Cengage, it is the worst publisher whose textbooks I had to use when taking computer classes a few years ago at a community college in North Carolina. The textbooks were so poorly written and almost always far, far behind current technology. The only reason I could see that my instructors would require them is because the associated online lessons and tests the students studied and took meant that the instructors had to do almost no work to "teach" the classes.
3
I've been a lecturer nearly 20 years, and I wrote a textbook a few years back. Having studied courses where the lecturers prescribed texts they had written, I well remember the cynicism and resentment I felt at being made to buy something my lecturer personally profited from, in addition to being paid to teach. When I wrote my own book I obtained an agreement from the publisher (a very large international publisher) that I could supply watermarked chapter PDFs free of charge to my students. It's worked pretty well. Presumably cost me some royalties but I got paid to teach (and developed the book while a salaried lecturer) so it would sit wrong to ask students to buy it.
2
Three thoughts:
1. Universities and their professorial denizens for millennia were dedicated to increasing and diffusing knowledge. Recently, university administrators, taking a page from revenue-driven corporations, decided to call knowledge "content" and to exploit its financial value.
2. When I, as an autodidact, started a business, I drank deeply from the available business texts that informed me how to run a business. I succeeded, having learned from these texts. But if I were to seek the same sources today, I would not have the resources to buy them. And the public libraries that I have consulted don't buy textbooks. Our entrepreneurial edge is thus endangered.
3. When I now teach, mindful of the cost of "content," how am I to be sure my students can have access to the best available scholarship if they can't pay for it?
I believe the cost of and access to texts and the latest scholarship is a critical threat to our nation's competitive viability. Is anyone listening?
8
I tell students what the required textbook is. I tell them they can buy any edition in any format. I was told by the campus textbook manager that capitalist textbook corporations want to do away with the used textbook market because they don't profit from it. I ask every semester and overwhelmingly students prefer a hard copy to the e-book.
Elementary economics explains the behavior of the capitalist textbook corporations. A commodity has a dual character. It is a use value and an exchange value. The use value refers to the characteristics that make the commodity usable to satisfy human needs and wants. The second aspect is Its exchange value or price. Exchange value is the most important aspect of the commodity for capitalist textbook publishers and not its use value.
When the capitalist textbook publishers try and push digital aps on students to put a layer or technology between me and them. I warn them. I aver, "The capitalist textbook capitalist corporation doesn't care whether you learn. I do."
5
do NOT blame the professors, but the publishers for continuously printing new editions and artificially skyrocketing the prices. I gladly would choose an older version, IF I could order it! If you talked to professors you would have learned that!
2
@xyz
You don't have to order older versions, or any version. If you're old enough to attend college, you're mature enough to source your own textbooks.
This retired professor posted lecture notes and creative commons materials online, supplemented with inexpensive paperback books. I got fed up decades ago, as did many of my colleagues. We adjusted, inventing alternatives and supplements.
6
Book prices are just one symptom of an illness that has advanced throughout 21st century America. It is more visible in higher education because it is uniquely isolated from the bustle of general commerce, but the effect is the same: the student is not an obligation, the student is a cash crop. The college is a company town; the bookstore, obviously, the company store. (The younger of you should Google Tennessee Ernie Ford's "16 Tons"). The quality of staff, their salaries, the quality of the courses, the high tuitions, the levels of student debt, all point this out. In reading thru the comments here, it is telling that when fair costs and innovation are cited, it is invariably at a higher quality school. Academia can correct these abuses easily; it has mostly chosen not to. They need to wake up. Most of them are public institutions, and the students they have shortchanged are or will be voters. If there is not an ethical remedy, there can always be a legislative one. The clock is ticking.
2
Thank god I taught acting for 35 years. Never used a textbook, never assigned one to students. No one ever questioned me about it. On the whole, artistic skills are not learned from books.
5
Wow. This is one of my major pet peeves regarding college extortion. Those of us who went to college in the 70's know that books were not a big issue or problem in cost. But those of us who have children and send them to college feel like we're being exploited just as they are. (we generally try to help them with expenses). The horrible thing is the books have a one dollar resale value when they take them back to the bookstore. At least Amazon has rental agreements but you have to be very punctual on the return. So please urge your colleagues to be more careful and really look into the costs...perhaps an earlier edition is acceptable, etc. Thanks.
2
As a professor and textbook author, I think much of the focus on the high cost of books is misplaced. It is true that publishers take any advantage to raise prices steadily. But charging what the market will bear is not unique to textbooks - just look at the coffee shop on my campus where students line up for a $4 cup or the bookstore that sells $30 tee shirts.
But what about the value that a book provides? A useful textbook gives an accessible synthesis of a field that is presented systematically and with gradations of difficulty. It also provides questions and exercises to help students learn the subject. The author(s) spend a lot of time and thought conceiving and organizing books. The publisher has a team of people who edit and then produce the books. All of this takes knowledge and effort.
The objections to textbook prices seem more a reaction to the changing expectations of students and their teachers. Buying a book that will not be opened seems like a waste. But a book that is useful and helps one learn a subject is respected as a valuable resource and serves as a touchstone. Likewise, internet-based modules and quizzes are a response to student expectations for ways to meet course objectives without much reading.
The internet has also changed the value of intellectual work like books, making people think that content should be free. This perception has been literally sold to us by the folks who make money from data gathered when searching for "free" content.
13
@Matt H
Last time we checked, a t-shirt from the campus book store was not mandatory for learning, and neither was an overpriced coffee.
Textbooks, on the other hand, are mandatory for learning.
And sorry, but on prices alone, the inflation of textbook prices far outpaces coffee prices and t-shirt prices.
Nothing is going to change. Unless there is some sort of inspired mass revolt by students, teachers and their parents, these massive rip-offs will keep on coming, year after year and into future decades.
When my daughter Britt was taking some community college courses during her senior year of high school, I went to the store and bought the books for her. Ouch. In order to get higher prices, the publishers would often include a CD-ROM as a way of making a book appear more valuable, even if it wasn't.
We have made college into a must have requirement in order to advance in our society unless the person has very special talents, is well trained in a specialized field or is just plain lucky with family or personal connections. Without a degree in most fields, you are stuck and can't move upward. So, this naturally leads to gross exploitation. It is the nature of the beast in the enterprise system: take as much as you can from whomever you can get it.
The administrators of colleges need to get involved. Guess what? The students are not their main concern. The students are a product, like sausage that pass through a factory and and then shipped out into the world. The main concerns are the faculty, the big donors, the parents of students and, whenever possible, putting up more and bigger buildings.
Our colleges should be ashamed of the way students are exploited for high tuition, added on fees and, yes, text book gouging. So what? It isn't going to stop.
3
@Doug Terry
You are right. It isn't going to stop. Too many people making money. My grandson works during summers and after school and he has enough for college fees but then finds out just how expensive the books cost and runs out of his savings and said next semester he is not going to buy books and he is hopeing to share with other students if possible. One professor's book requirement for his class cost over $1000. This is at a UC university.
A next door neighbor of mine is a music teacher at another California college and he wrote the book that his class uses. It was on the history of music. The book cost $150. He definitely did get royalties and it was revised on a regular basis. Actually he is no longer a neighbor, he moved to a bigger house.
I co-wrote a graduate-level textbook. Split the remuneration among we three co-authors, and we each received 5% of the purchase price. That, along with the low volume expected at the graduate level, means that I was grossly underpaid for that significant effort. In addition, this was in a rapidly moving field, and the book only had a few years of useful life. But we were a bit too wise to expend more effort at successive revisions.
Our motivation in writing the book was the absence of contemporary (at the time) material collected in one place for use by students. As it happened, I never taught a class using my book.
The financial pie for a textbook is sliced into many pieces, but the academic authors get a diet-sized portion.
5
It is too easy to blame professors for a system where the customers (parents and their children) demand the best of everything. For example almost every school in order to attract applicants is in a race with every other school where the race is won by offering better dorms, cafeterias, fitness centers, food, facilities etc. For colleges and their staffs it is an arms race where the competition is not on price or value, but on having the best of the best possible. Getting into the best school possible regardless the price. Schools do not compete on their prices for anything, because their customers are more interested in what they are buying first, and second, maybe, what they are paying for it.
If you are buying a Ferrari are you really going to settle for non Ferrari floor mats to put in your new Ferrari?
1
I'm a professor and I couldn't agree more. There is resistance to alternatives, often stemming from good intentions, e.g. uniformity across different sections of the same course taught by different professors. Largely though, the resistance is to evade a full reworking of the course and reluctance to slog through the fine details of a course with colleagues who can't fully agree on content. It is true however, that students complain stridently when there is lack of uniformity...among other things.
On a related note, professors are under assault from companies of all stripes trying to sell us all of their innovative methods of teaching, to the point where all we would be doing is managing software packages. It is widely seen that academia is a money making proposition for everyone but students and, yes, professors (in general).
2
I sold the textbook to the students of my real analysis (math) class for 12 bucks. $2 for copying and $10 going to the author. This was a version of the classic Riesz-Sz. Nagy book where the latter held the copyright. After he died, I kept paying his daughter.
1
I'm retired from a south Texas college of pharmacy where, during my 11 years there, students gradually came to reject all reading assignments. Perhaps because the college claimed to be the least expensive pharmacy school in the state and one of the lowest in the nation, there was no support from administration to require reading assignments, and in fact, not for writing assignments either. It is refreshing to hear that this is not the case elsewhere.
2
As a professor in the early-to-mid 1990s, I attempted to create a model for a 'living textbook' in the area of systems engineering -- which constituted ordinary differential equations, applied to anything and everything I and my students could think of. Using the Web (then in its infancy, but growing rapidly), the notion was to form a sort of quasi-non-profit company, to develop and deliver information content. (A for-profit model could also be conceived.) A board would review content submitted for inclusion, into a published framework. As the instructor, I could deliver lectures and lecture notes, homework assignments solutions, laboratories, tests and test solutions. Students could submit the results of their term-long projects. Anyone could submit anything, really. Providers of content approved for incorporation would receive shares in the enterprise.
I proposed a subscription model to monetize the creation of knowledge/information: $5 for the first year's CD, and maybe $2-3 for updates subsequently.
Overall, the intent was to make information at once far less costly, and ideally more comprehensive, rich, interesting and creative. A board ensured consistency, uniformity, and control. A shares model ensured intellectual property was recognized in business- and legal-appropriate ways.
Such an approach could still take hold. However, resistance from the publishers was intense, then and now. Profits were threatened by the goring of cash cows: always a status quo no-no.
2
Yes, textbooks are expensive. Some of the comments reference turning the book orders over to the campus bookstore. It is not unusual for the bookstores to add 30%-40% to the already overpriced books to help offset other service costs. Bookstores (at community colleges) are losing propositions. But, they survive by making it possible for students to use their financial aid to purchase the overpriced textbooks. This is a wealth transfer-from the Fed's to Financial Aid to the Bookstore to the budget offsets for the entire college. Students can purchase the textbooks elsewhere, but they need to front the money--that they most often do not have--and then be reimbursed out of their financial aid. This is a well-greased system.
Many students looked forward to the book buybacks, especially in the Fall Semester, that coincides with the holidays. They could sell their $300 textbook for, maybe, $30; and, this was useful for holiday expenses.
While the article looks askance at the access codes of say $100, these codes often include electronic versions of the textbooks, making them one-half to one-third of the cost of a paper or hardbound text. The downside is, the codes have no resale value on the 'used' market.
My experience is from (most recently) 24 years at a community college. Even a thorough search of materials that yielded a good text and at a 'reasonable' price, did not come with any control over the markup by the bookstore.
3
@P Nedry You are completely misinformed. Bookstores receive books from a publisher at a discount off the list price. They do not mark up books over the list price to cover other costs.
Many university libraries buy e-books that give students on-line access. More textbooks should be made available that way.
In Canada there is a "fair use" limit to copying material, (typically up to 10% for books, I think, maybe less for textbooks).
If there are many competing textbooks (e.g. intro Psychology), the prof can cobble together parts of multiple books, and post those parts as pdf to the course website for free, as long as the limit is not surpassed.
1
I am an adjunct faculty member at Harvard Extension School. I assign the textbooks that I believe will be of the most help to my students. These are books that I have read (and have purchased and have benefited from) and I believe that they will provide great information of real educational value.
My students disagree. They think they know which books will provide them with the best cost benefit for their education.
If they are correct, my position is superfluous. They think they have a superior perspective on course content and course materials. Fine. They can self-select their books and, for that matter, can self-educate. Let’s get rid of all the ill-informed and self-serving faculty and empower the students to make their own choices.
If my more than a dozen years of training and 35 years of scholarship don’t provide much value, let’s turn the entire enterprise over to the youth of the nation to become autodidacts. Good luck.
7
I graduated from grad school about 15 years ago, and, used to work in the textbook section at a university. At the time the expensive books ran $70-80.00. I was just talking to a recent grad at work and was absolutely blown away when she told me the prices of books. When I worked in the bookstore, we would collectively gripe about professors who wrote their own custom-published textbooks (pysch, soc, econ) which they required for the class. They would then come out with new edition within 1-2 years so new students had to buy a new book and previous students couldn't sell back the previous edition. About 20 years ago, I remember Kandel's Principles of Neural Science was my prized investment, for around $100.00 at the time, give or take, if I remember correctly. Now I see it's $350.00 for a ppbk version.
1
Across the board, students are paying more and more for less and less, trapped as they are by the untouchable and overvalued campus instructors and the school money machine. I have helped evaluate graduating seniors who used "me" as first personal singular. Meanwhile, the university president is granted a $100,000 bonus, for some reason.
1
I have been an adjunct at a community college for 14 years. I currently make approximately $3,200/3-credit course. I am told which textbook to use (which makes it easier and cheaper for students to switch between sections).
Students pay between $363 and $1,089 for the course, depending upon whether they live in the county or not and whether they live in a supporting school district or not.
It used to be that online courses were capped at 20 students. Now, they are capped at 35. If there are 30 students in my class paying the lowest possible rate, that means $10,890 in revenue. My pay plus approx. 16% for employer taxes and the state-mandated 3% employer retirement match accounts for approx. $3,715.
That means that, in a class of 30, students are paying less than $125 (rounded) each for my services. That includes all the time I spend developing/updating the course, grading multiple writing assignments, providing individualized feedback, completing all the mandatory trainings, referring students to local resources, advising them re study strategies, and participating in continuing education related to pedagogy and my primary profession.
The text we are required to use is generally in the $80-$125 range. Many students try to avoid purchasing it, especially when student aid is delayed. I don't blame them.
Much is wrong with this picture.
7
This article ignores some fundamental points about textbooks
1. most students sell their books back so the real price is the retail price less the buyback. Unfortunately most students do not use the money returned to buy next semester's books. The real price of books taking into account used book sales and buy backs from students is less than inflation. The bad rap is based on new book sales only.
2. the used book market is exceptionally efficient. As a textbook writer, my sales drop to near 0 after two semesters in spite of the same number of professors ordering book.
3. Bookstores and resellers (that sells the same books multiple times) make much more revenue from sales than the professors who write books, especially since one gets no royalties from used books sales. Publishers make no money from used book sales as well.
10
Students RENT used books for the semester for more than $100 each. There is no resale value. As the parent of a new community college student, I'm appalled by this price gouging. With many community college kids on financial aid and receiving grants, it's essentially our tax dollars subsidizing the for-profit educational publishing business.
Thank you to the author for shining a light on this issue.
3
I disagree that science has not changed, especially biology, which has changed dramatically; however, it is easy to avoid the high cost of textbooks.
For years I have been using a four- to five year old version of a textbook for my undergrads. They can get the book for $0 to $20 online. Unfortunately, students with financial aid are required to use the bookstore!
It is up to me to update critical information, as it should be.
The title of this article is unfair to professors who have already addressed this issue.
3
@fsrbaker The real rip-off in higher ed is the geometric progression in universities hiring vast numbers of highly-paid administrators of something-or-other while diminishing the ranks of full-time faculty, handing instructional responsibilities off to starving adjuncts.
And yes, books are highly overpriced and a problem, but like many others who have written here, I have tried many solutions with modest success. I have self-published a text, over which I have had price control and have profited nothing (outside of student learning and engagement). I have routinely used older versions of my preferred text, which are easily and inexpensively secured online, with no appreciable loss in content (many texts "revise" each year, making the previous model obsolete without changing much at all). And: adjuncts, my heart goes out to you. Unionize!
2
American higher education in unique - it has managed to invert the customer-vendor relationship. Students (the customer) are thankful to be paying so much money while the university cynically milks them. Tenured professors assign TAs to do their job while they moonlight with consulting and start ups that compete with bona fide businesses. The text book racket is just a small additional money maker that does add value proportional to its cost. Is it any wonder that liberal elites are so disliked?
3
University education needs a major 21st century revamp. Back in my college days there was no internet to find out about a subject. I used to borrow textbooks from the library when I couldn't afford the specific one for the course. These days a textbook seems almost irrelevant with all of the information out there. The professor needs to curate it, that's all.
3
You can still borrow text books at the university library for maybe an hour at max. You can even request special books from other UC universities for free. There was even a library shuttle between UCSC and UCB campuses. There even a rental market for text books now. The problem is that some class programs are crazy expensive even if you’re getting reimbursed by your employer. I recall spending 2k for all of books, study materials, practice exams, and exam fees for two PMI certifications. Most of my fellow students were borrowing everything they could from me once I passed my exam including my laptop with time bomb vendor software ( can’t be copied and expires after 4 months or so of use).
1
Mr. Wu's point is especially troubling when the quality of the English of many of these textbooks is taken into account. Globalization affects academic publishing now in that many researchers/authors are non-native speakers and in the publishing house's efforts to continually expand their book lists, authors are signed up who may have command of their subject matter, but best be able to express that mastery in their native language, which is not English. Non-native authors/researchers then endeavor to write in English and the formatted book is sent to the publisher for proofreading only. The copy editing step (that once was the hallmark of American and British English language publishing houses) is completely bypassed in order to bring the book to the online market as quickly as possible.
It is simply wrong that English language textbooks with poor English should be assigned to students and bought by students, especially given that students should be able to consider every textbook a model of correct English expression as a part of their education. As the publishing houses request that proofreaders correct only the worst grammatical offenses and let other errors or awkward expressions be passed over, formal, academic English expression is changing. Written expression that would have been considered unacceptable 5 years ago is now publishable. It is becoming less precise and more confusing. How often do students give up on understanding a completely garbled paragraph?
2
I completely agree with your article, thank you for writing it. I switched to open source materials years ago and more professors are going that direction. Clearly there is more that can be done by professors about this. BUT - don't forget that these predatory publishers are also impacting professors and universities by charging our libraries so much for scientific journals. This reduces access to science and forces universities to make decisions between high-priced journals for research faculty and resources for students. This is a story that also needs to be told in public circles.
2
As a professor I found that students just didn't purchase texts. The textbook publishers started to make digital texts with problem sets and all kinds of guides and aids available for ~$100 on a single semester basis. So the idea that a text cost $200 and on top of that another $100 for aids may be an exaggeration. Secondly it was shameful that new editions had so little that was new and professors had no choice but to assign new additions as older editions were not available from publishers. I saw the problem from both sides. Many academics now write their own materials and/or don't assign a text at all. That's one solution albeit not the best.
2
My dad was an accounting professor from 1950 until his passing in 1983.
He never changed the book unless they stopped printing the edition. He always told us he could cover any changes in a few minutes of a class.
He alway felt so bad when he had to change the book and all the students had to spend so much money for a new book.
Book salesmen didn’t like him much, but students were grateful.
1
So books are worth updates, some are not. In a field like criminal law you can always use an older edition which is much cheaper, and new cases can be added with a handout.
2
This is a problem that can't be solved at the level of individual professors; it'll take action by department chairs and university administrators. Suppose you're a professor faced with a choice between making your students pay $70 for WebAssign or not assigning any graded homework (let's posit that the department can't/won't pay for graders and that grading hundreds of homeworks yourself is not an option). Then if you want to do the right thing for your students, you should make them pay for WebAssign. The educational value of forcing them to actually do homework makes it an easy choice.
Now if the department were willing to pay for graders, or even better if the university paid for graders and made the departments pay for their textbooks, the situation would be different and it would be an easy decision in the other direction. But we need better incentives from university leadership or professors will just continue to do the individually right thing.
3
I am a state college professor. When we select texts we must demonstrate that that we have investigated lower priced books and present a rationale if we select a higher priced one.
3
Many additional expenses with online software required, printing costs, 3D printing and many additional costs for architecture and design students. On top of an additional semester fee for Design Program. University of Minnesota.
When I taught at a state university the campus bookstore refused to carry anything but the most recent edition of a text that was “revised” every two years. And of course using the campus bookstore was required by the university, quite possibly because there was some financial gain that benefitted the university, not the students and definitely not the faculty.
3
It's infuriating to see a Columbia U professor *just now* figuring out that textbooks are too expensive.
Students have been complaining about this for two decades. The prices are enormous. Teachers lead classes about social justice and marginalized groups, but have no problem price-gouging their students for the international conglomerates that make these textbooks.
It's despicable, downright despicable. As a adjunct professor, I'm required to teach from a $50 textbook. I scanned the whole thing and posted it on my course page. Is it illegal? Yes. Could I get fired for it? Yes. But I'd rather take that risk than support the textbook oligopoly.
As an adjunct, I make about $15k per year. I know how much $200 means to a student. These tenured professors, some of them break six figures in annual pay. They don't get it. They talk about how everyone should get an opportunity at college, then they assign textbooks that only rich and middle-class kids can comfortably afford to buy. It's a joke.
So now, in 2019, you're finally speaking out about textbooks? Give me a break.
6
I absolutely agree with the column.
I was a student in a top college in the Boston area about sixty plus years ago. Even then I felt many of the text books are ripoffs. Take on econ 101 example the text has a new printing - not a new edition - every year and there were only a few changes in the new print but you wouldn't know it until you bought it and compare with the old version with a friend who took the course the previous year. Even at that time it seemed clear that the new printing is disigned for the benefit of the professor and/or the publisher.
It is shocking for me to read here that a text book can cost upwards of $200 before the digital access fee.
2
@Notmypresident But also, printings of book runs get sold out, and then the publisher reprints them.
The reason why publishers charge high prices is because the sold volume is low due to pirating. Prices were lower before the digital age came about as it was very hard to physically copy books for mass redistribution. Now you just create a single pdf file and you can deliver it to everyone who needs the book. These days the largest revenues are due to online supplements used for homeworks, quizzes, and exams. These have to be individual.
7
I use online sources. No textbooks, no cost. My evaluations are fine and very few students want a text. I recommend to the few who do that they buy a used one online. No one does.
1
I was in Tim's class. I do appreciate that he made the textbook free, but found it hard to use and poorly edited. There's a reason that textbooks cost money and often it comes down to quality.
8
Right on. One of my undergrads from Poland showed me a thin rag of xeroxed pages stapled together and said that it contained more real physics than the $240, multicolor, illustrated text required for a course he was taking. Same in my science discipline. American students have been fed (and accept) the idea that every text of meaning is thick, contains little print but numerous color pictures and meaningless asides shown in colored boxes on every page. Without a doorstop weight, a really good teaching document will be passed off as superfluous. Textbook authors and publishers have won the battle for the hearts and minds of today's students. The word brainwashed comes to mind.
1
Many times the "new editions" really don't contain material much different from their predecessors. In math, for example, the books often seem to be updated merely to bring the examples in word problems more in touch with current culture rather than because any of the math content has actually changed.
3
In my course the total cost of the books is around $35 new, because they are classics, but sometimes expensive textbooks actually do provide value for money. An example would be music appreciation texts that include all the sound files the student will need for the semester. $125 is not unreasonable for what you get, in my opinion.
2
Even though our textbook store is suffering, we are strongly encouraged to consider price for our public University students. One reason is that many students can't afford to get books even if they are assigned. When I place my order for textbooks, the bookstore tells me how expensive my class materials are relative to my peers. I want to support academic publishing and honor copyright. At the same time, I want to make my class as affordable as possible for starving students. It's really tough, because I twist and turn to find legal ways to get the materials to my students for free, using the reserve system and finding open source materials. This is a fundamental problem for the future of knowledge production and dissemination. p.s. the free market cannot solve this problem.
2
The number of professors who write textbooks is a tiny minority - perhaps a fraction of a percentage point. However, this article (at least in the title) implies that professors - all - are complicit in ripping students off, through the high cost of textbooks. Actually, most professors are poorly paid and over worked. In fact, with Robinhood like maneuvers, they often illegally make copies of textbooks for their students, putting their own livelihoods and freedoms in jeopardy. It would be wise for the media to evaluate the veracity of an article before rushing simply print it, even if it is from an Ivy-league academic.
7
@Cynical Good points. Also, it's just false for the author to say that textbook authors have a say in what the price of the book will be.
1
They make money off of the used books market as well.
I spent about $1100 on books this semester. Last week I got an e-mail from the book distributor titled "your books could be worth $5"
That's about right.
2
I'm surprised the Times would publish an opinion piece with such an inflammatory title that isn't true or likely to be accurate. As the comments so far indicate, professors are more emotionally affiliated with students than with publishers. and know from personal experience the costs of getting an education. The common response among my professorial colleagues within and without the community college with which I am associated is being appalled at textbook prices, so much so that increasingly one hears of required textbooks being jettisoned in favor of sets of digitized readings, diversely sourced, available either on the internet or behind the class or library's password system for enrolled students. The problem with that it is also eliminates the pleasure of having high quality illustrations, especially in my field of art history, that one can pour over at a desk or cradle in a lap - the hues and resolution of images viewed on a screen are unreliable.
7
I am having serious trouble with some glaring omissions in this essay. First, the author asks "Given those odds, might it be worth devoting the efforts into a book designed to be cheaper, or even free, as a form of public service?" An article linked to this one has a professor (Mankiw) defending his royalties by asking "Let me fix that for you: Would you keep doing your job if you stopped being paid? Why or why not?" But, professors are not doing it for free. Professors are paid a salary to do this work, many of a quite nice salary that, by the way, is supported by student tuition and in the case of public universities, the tax payer. I too am a professor who writes books and I can tell you that at least in my case, we have very limited control over book prices. I avoid publishers that charge high priced books because I see our job as creating and sharing knowledge...naive as that may sound...and for most, high priced books are bought only by libraries so the knowledge does not get shared. In the end, I struggle with the racket of the middleman, particularly when it comes to journal articles. The publisher does not create the content, does not review the content, does not provide administrative support in selecting the content and yet, charges as much as $30 for an article. As they say, something is rotten in Denmark.
5
Latex is an open source typesetting standard that academics use. It is wonderful. Mathematicians from all over the world build what are known as packages that provide features. I bring this all up because it points to the possible beauty of making some standard that allows text books with homework problem sets delivered cheaply, easily -- in a way that evolves and is all on the internet. There are many who contribute to latex for no other reason than the cost to share is nothing and there is some pride and other non-zero sum ideas afloat.
Twitter and Facebook should have open source competitors as well. There are armies in the world who don't want to sell things; they want to give them away. In fact the real solution set of many modern problems is to tap into the inherent pleasure in sharing and giving your humanity away.
1
@theonanda As an author who spends several years full time on each of my books, and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of my very own money on my publishing business, I can tell you that not everyone can afford to create for free.
3
@Frances Grimble
You're a good editor. The idea needs to be tweaked. Of course, if Yang gave you $1000 a month, then money, maybe, would be a given. Could you still write or is it getting more than others -- zero sum games that drives you to write. I'm a communist.
I am a college instructor. This past semester I deliberately chose to use books and reading material that was either free or available at a very cheap price - namely used textbooks. I also allowed students to make copies of the used textbook or scan it and send to students. I scanned several reading assignments myself and sent to students. Essentially, none of my students had to pay for any reading materials.
However, I got pushback from the administration for this. They don't want me to do this again. They want the students to buy the paper text or online text for a substantial amount of money.
Don't blame instructors only. It's the institutions themselves who are doing this. My fight with the institution will commence in January. I don't know what the result will be. Stay tuned.
4
This one touches a raw nerve. I teach in a STEM field. I've looked and looked and looked for a text book that's appropriate for a course I'm teaching now. There's one book that's decent and dozens that are terrible. The book has many hundreds of excellent examples, and I know the author has put a ton of effort into writing it. So I assign the book; it costs $200 from the publisher, amazon rents it out for around $60. I don't think $60 is all that bad.
So what happens? One of my students finds a free (i.e. stolen) version online and passes the pdf file along to the other students. They then show me the book and are obviously proud that they managed to snag such a good deal. I ask them to please not put me in the middle.
* Also, as far as writing a book myself? Don't I wish. The place I work for doesn't give any credit for writing a text book, certainly not a book for sophomores and juniors. If anything, they get upset at the thought that a faculty member isn't spending _all_ their available time conducting research.
4
I went to college, the first time, in the early to mid 1970s. Of the 30 or so classes I took, I had a half dozen or so required textbooks written by the prof., but I had more books that were not strict textbooks, but books used in the course. I recall using a number of paperback books, used as texts for the course. One entire semester cost me about $45. From the time I left the first time in 1976 until I went back in the early 80s, the books, now more of he strict textbook varieties had jumped to, at one point in the graduate course I paid nearly $199 for three books in which we consulted just three or four chapters. That was a ripoff.
2
This is spot on. As a professor I long ago gave up using any text that costs more than $25. And the new editions every few years are a scam - maybe not in molecular biology or astro-physics or some other field where new knowledge is expanding rapidly, but how about say accounting? Or calculus for that matter, given that Newton/Liebniz invented it > 300 years ago?
3
There are many professors who publish their own lecture notes. Just Google `lecture notes on XX'. This is true at least for Engineering and Math. Doing so is very time-consuming, but it eliminates the need for buying a textbook for their students. I doubt that there are many professors who carelessly assign expensive books; sometimes they don't make the best choice and sometimes good books are expensive.
2
This scam is certainly not new, and there are some unseemly variations. I went to law school in the 1980s on a shoestring student loan budget. The only place to buy my overpriced law books was a store on the city square owned and operated by the wife of the professor who taught Wills and Estates. Surprise! Surprise!, he authored the textbook required for his course. I wrote a short op-ed that was published in the law center's student newspaper pointing out what I saw as the unfairness of the system. Nothing changed then, and now, with textbooks exponentially pricier, it seems the scams are even worse.
I don't know about STEM, but nobody needs a textbook for a course in writing. All the principles of good writing are available free on various sites online, as is advice on how and when to break the "rules." All the prof would need to do is research these sites, decide which ones suit his or her purpose, and provide the links if the prof thinks texts are necessary at all for a course in writing. (People learn to write by doing it and not by reading about how to.) As for English and American literature, virtually every primary text (poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction) before 1900 (including all of Shakespeare) and many primary texts from after 1900 are available free online. So are originals and translations of all the major texts of classical Greek and Latin literature, to mention only the areas I'm familiar with. I strongly suspect that in any area of the humanities it would be possible to construct some, maybe even most, and in some cases maybe all of the course from what's available free online in the form of both primary and secondary sources.
3
Please. Law books might be expensive but the head title that implies that Professors are at fault is ridiculous. As a professor for 25 years in two small liberal arts schools, we often gave packets of readings that were relatively inexpensive, maybe $25/ a semester. But mainly STOP blaming Professors! We get enough of that from the rumpsters. We are hard working, mostly underpaid (except perhaps economic or law faculty as this author is....), and have to work intensively on our own materials —whether writing/film/art —on our "time off": summers and holidays. It is not professors who are upping the cost of education, but rather it is the hiring of innumerable special administrators and the building of status science/law/business schools and sports stadiums that bring the costs up.
STOP BLAMING TEACHERS!
6
@Robert
Please see my comment. One can blame some professors.
Once upon a time, I tried to assign cheap paperbacks of classic texts such as Plato's Republic, plus my own in-house text, total cost about $30; but the college administration insisted I use a massive anthology students neither needed nor could afford. I spent a year sending my students to a local bookstore to buy the books I wanted to use. My point is that administrators mark up prices 30%, so the more expensive the book the more "profit" the administration makes.
3
At this point, most universities' libraries have a scholarly communication librarian who is most likely trying to evangelize open access (getting scholarly research--often funded by taxpayers--out from behind publishers' cost-prohibitive paywalls) and open educational resources (free/open access textbooks and course materials) to faculty. It's an uphill battle because, as the author notes, it's much easier for faculty to choose the new edition of their same-old-same-old textbook than to truly explore the options. If you are a professor and you want to take action on this issue, contact your library!
4
Textbooks are priced ridiculously high; there is no doubt about that. By the time I was finishing grad school textbook rentals had become commonplace. But the thing that really enraged me -- and this happened several times over the ten years I was a part-time or full-time student -- is when the syllabus lists a book or books as required and then we *never* used them. Didn't even crack them open. And I'm not talking about skipping doing assigned reading; I mean we were never assigned any material contained in those books.
I'm a librarian; I love books. But I most certainly did not love buying or even renting them when they weren't used. That *is* a professor's or at least a department head's fault. Syllabi are used over and over; if the books are no longer needed you'd think someone would have the presence of mind to remove them from the list.
2
Professor Wu's hypocrisy here is notable, as are some similar comments. A little-used Law School Casebook is not worth the cost. Understood. But at your institution, Columbia Law School lists the total costs and fees for a first-year law student at $101, 345. Textbook costs are estimated at $1500.
https://www.law.columbia.edu/node/153786
One year's tuition alone is $69,896 for one year. Is the value of the books worth less than 1% of the cost of one year's tution?
Costs of many things have risen significantly since the 1970's. (Compare Columbia's tuition, and that of most other universities). But many college instructors do rely on a quality book or digital service as part of their course materials. At the undergraduate level most of the required course materials are also supported by the publisher, often with very expensive image files, animations, and other digital tools utilized in Lecture. So if it is needed, consider the author's work, and the significant costs in producing and supporting a quality book or digital service to enhance learning. Consider if it is an asset to the course and Institution itself. We all know that students rely on and benefit from a book if it is required and utilized as part of the course. Is it worth one, or ten percent of the cost of the course?
9
I’m very upfront about how I rip-off my students. They can make deposits in my offshore shell company bank accounts. There is a sliding grade scale, so they can decide if they want to pay the money for the higher grade. I’m even open to barter.
As a lecturer, not a tenured professor, I have no choice if I don’t want to be homeless. I used to commit armed robbery to supplement my income, but now with a minimum of computer skills I can remove funds from secure bank sites without the danger of flying lead.
5
Most decent undergrad textbooks are also available for free online under a creative commons license. My professors assigned them. The cost to me = $0.
Thank you, caring Professors! Boo Pearson.
1
Only textbooks on the most popular introductory course topics are available online for free. The rest are not.
When I was in college, I had very few formal textbooks. I was a history major who also took many courses in English literature. I had a stack of paperbacks of various books, some of which I still own. A book on the Black Death is an informative book on the Black Death, and a copy of Wuthering Heights is a copy of Wuthering Heights, whether they were used in a class setting or not. Books used in a class are not always what the book trade calls "textbooks."
2
I taught college courses in several related disciplines for over 40 years. For at least the latter half of those years, I used only one textbook, available for $15 online (older, acceptable versions), and free at our library. For other classes, I created free "lecture notes" (readings), PowerPoint slides illustrated with relevant images and charts, hands-on in-class exercises, worksheets, study sheets, etc. Every class was mirrored online (Blackboard/Canvas) with many well-chosen & constantly updated hyperlinks to online instructional readings/lessons/videos. This is NOT difficult for a professor who really wants to teach, who wants students to learn, who respects & values students' time and money. I have no respect for so-called "professors" or "instructors" who lazily assign the same text, newest edition, every term, using the same dusty old lecture notes.
The best idea I've heard is to include textbooks/access cards, lab fees, etc. in the basic tuition--then, it would be in the best interests of the college to keep those costs minimal. But, because the real beneficiaries from such as system are students & their grantors/lenders, it will never happen.
3
I always order the older editions for my courses, but the campus bookstore, which is operated by Barnes & Noble, refuses to order order old editions, so I tell my students to get used copies of my older editions online, and then I print up everything they need for the first 2-3 weeks of class. We have a contest to see who paid the least amount for the cleanest copy of my older edition texts.
7
As an environmentalist, I've been able to rationalize the high cost - textbooks are replaced so often, go out of date quickly as new information becomes available. I understood that part of the cost of the books was that they would need to be collected/recycled.
This is a very old story. Students complained about high book prices when I went to college fifty years ago. Students are consumers in a captive market. They are helpless. In this they resemble patients caught in the medical merry-go-round. Both of these institutions, higher education and 'higher medicine, are way overdue for reform. So, these young people go to college to get an education, don't they? So, learn! Lesson One: "All professions are conspiracies against the laity." (GBS)
(Good luck, kids. It doesn't get any better once you graduate.)
1
@Bob Lesson 1 for us was, find out which students are taking the same class next semester and sell them the whole stack of books at a price agreeable to both parties. Professors were very willing to tell us whether they were assigning the same books next semester. Lesson 2 was, get acquainted with the used bookstores near campus. The college bookstore also sold used texts. Of course, we didn't have access to all those used books on Amazon Marketplace back then.
1
IMO, some responders here have gone to extremes. Good textbooks--well-written, well-researched textbooks--are worth more than 'free.' I think we need to think about good textbooks like we do good journalism--someone has to pay for proper research and writing.
I'm probably never going to use Open Educational Resources for my college courses. For me, it's like using a free news source for my news. I just wouldn't be getting the kind of narrative that's important to me, and I'd darned sure be worried about context and perspective.
I think students should invest in good books. No, I don't want publishing companies to rip students off, but I'm finding that most publishers are offering books in a variety of formats, many of which (such as e-books) are extremely inexpensive. And, of course, students can easily rent books for the cost of a few months of Netflix.
To me, this article critiques a problem that is already being solved. Good texts are worth your investment, students. Search for the best deals and share/rent when you can. But don't hesitate to buy well-written books when appropriate. Thirty years later, I'm still referring back to some of my college texts.
12
Could not agree more. The students at my institution have developed lots of grassroots methods to minimize cost - we have shared PDF documents and drives, some majors/clubs have textbooks available for their students, and the student council hosts a book sale every semester for students to sell used books. Professors have "accidentally" left PDFs lying around. These arrangements work in large part because the professors use widely-available textbooks, or provide their own notes. Of course, all these methods are of questionable ethics and legality. It's just unfortunate that those transgressions are the price we pay for freely or cheaply available information.
1
@Alexa It's unfortunate that you are breaking the law and depriving the creators of works of needed income. Students are not more financially "worthy" than authors and publishers.
4
I pay a lot of attention to the cost of textbooks. I choose the least expensive ones I can and provide free on-line materials wherever possible. But it isn't always possible to provide free materials. For that reason, I always put the books on reserve at the library. And every semester, I'll have at least one student come to me to tell me that he or she tried to get the book an hour before the class in which the material was supposed to be read, but some other student had it out. And I will say to that student that all of the copy machines on campus are also scanners, that scanning is free to students, and that people are permitted to photocopy materials for personal use, provided they don't sell the material, and I suggest that the student go to the library WELL BEFORE the reading is due. I also have students who let me know that it is too much to expect that they go to the library for the books. Not sure what to do about this.
3
Bravo! An issue that has always been first on my mind as I greet my college freshmen. It's about time it became part of the conversation. Congratulations, Prof. Wu.
2
As a college professor, I agree that the cost of textbooks is often obscene. But its not the professors who set the price, but the textbook publishers. So the real issue is about the economics of publishing rather than the royalties for the authors.
5
But the professors decide what the customers must purchase. That is a flat out conflict of interest.
There is a very simple solution. Ban professors from requiring any textbook or other materials in which they have an economic interest.
1
30 years ago my college set of textbooks cost me $225 dollars total per semester. Guess what, they still cost the same today. That actually means adjusted for inflation they are far cheaper than they use to be.
If this was the massive conspiratorial full blown money grab wouldn't the publishers be increasing the prices to at least keep pace with inflation?
1
Books are outrageously expensive, partly because everybody needs to make a profit and they are expensive to produce with a limited audience to sell to. But the author is clearly correct; cheaper alternatives should be pursued where possible.
I retired from teaching 10 years ago. For my entire career at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point we had a text rental system. There are drawbacks to that system, but no question it was a lot cheaper for the students.
2
I teach math in a big ten university. I find the publishers absurdly rapacious. One technique that is especially galling is annual "new editions" which are the same except for the numbering of exercises. Students have to have access to the latest edition to be able to do homework assignments. It is the most naked coercion to force students to buy new rather than used books. The books are meaninglessly inflated with irrelevant illustrations or inclusions to justify costs in excess of $100. I do a lot of stuff to circumvent the need to buy the latest edition but it is a major irritant.
5
I once had a math professor who was the author of a very expensive textbook, and he was outraged at the cost of it. He himself bought ten copies and put them on two hour reserve in the library for our use. There were lots and lots of problem sets assigned from the book, but thanks to his generosity, all students had access to them at no cost
8
I agree wholeheartedly that textbooks are far, far too expensive.
But this article and this comment in particular
"It required work to switch"
minimizes what is generally an enormous task.
I work where even a smidgeon of negative student feedback can lead to getting fired (not an uncommon situation). Textbook prices are beyond my control. There are no decent cheaper alternatives and finding that out was a huge task. But student complaints about prices put my job at risk.
So I spent every waking moment (when I should have been doing other things) on writing course texts. It has been a complete waste of time that really put my career in jeopardy and the texts are great. How could they be compared to properly researched and carefully edited texts? Many of my friends have had to do the same thing.
This is yet another situation where instructors are being blamed for a situation beyond their control. People need to start looking to those who are actually responsible for the problem, the publishers, the university officials who starve library budgets so that textbooks can't be purchased in bulk for the library and shared.
3
My most expensive books were always for basic STEM courses: calculus, physics, chemistry, etc. that I took freshman and sophomore years of undergrad. Why? Because those are some of the largest courses offered at universities. If you have a captive market of 200 students every semester, why would you not want to drive up the prices?
However, the material taught in those courses has not changed in at least 50 years (closer to several hundred years for some), so really you shouldn’t ever need to buy a new book for them. Different versions would only include changes in page numbers, equation labels, or rewrite exercises with different values. This is important if you’re a student and the professor requires you to use Equation 10.4b in a certain edition. I also had several courses that required “online access codes” that were required to complete homework assignments, and only came with the accompanying text, which was then rendered useless afterwards because you couldn’t sell them back.
The funny thing is that upon taking more advanced courses as an upperclassman and grad student, professors generally provided their own text and materials, or the materials were far less expensive.
It’s obvious that this is predatory price gouging because universities and publishers only go after the biggest and easiest targets - intro level undergrad courses. They don’t bother with higher level courses because the market is too small.
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@Luke N The basic content of introductory Physics, Chemistry, and Biology books have changed ENORMOUSLY in the last decade, not to mention the last 50 years. STEM are among the fastest moving and most dynamic fields. Course content is constantly changing.
18
@Luke N - STEM books cost more to print. Math & science problems and science problems and equations require offset print, while printing an English textbook is simple, straightforward paragraphs.
8
@Paul
Oh come on. Do people now have two hearts and 3 lungs? How has basic bio changed?
Of course basic physics has changed. Newton's Laws have replaced Quantum Mechanics. What, you say not so? Well, hat are the fundamental changes in physics or chemistry?
13
When I was in college, the early Sixties, the biggest scam was new editions of textbooks every year. Samuelson's book on economics changed every year, so it always had to be bought new. I regret to see the scam continues.
1
When my daughter was a poor nursing student, a member of her study group made copies of a very expensive nursing textbook for the half-dozen other students in the study group, including my daughter, at her own expense. The study group member who copied the books was married to a lawyer at a major law firm.
When my son was an engineering student, he and his fellow students shared textbooks and incredibly expensive software. Pirated $20,000 software programs circulated around the campus. My son listened to free recordings of classes at MIT and other universities to avoid buying texts or to supplement poor texts and class lectures at his school.
Small ethical lapses to offset the astounding costs of tuition and textbooks and necessary software and research licenses. As a helping parent, I admit that I was relieved to be released from a small part of the college burden.
68
@DB It is the "small ethical lapses" that have led us to today's "It's ok as long as I don't get caught" mentality. I, too, had to pay ridiculously exorbitant prices for law school textbooks, so I know the burden it imposes. I agree that students are being ripped off on a regular basis, but the answer is not to sanction ethical lapses, but to address the problem at its root. It may be that professors are unthinking in assigning crazy-priced books; never looked at it that way. But let's please not encourage a form of "cheating" as a way around the problem.
16
@Allan The major ethical lapse is the price gouging by the companies that write these books and the folks who encourage their use.
What the "pirates" did is the ethical course of action.
22
@Allan
If you really want to get into it, it's more than an ethical lapse to launch multiple editions of the same book without actually adding new content.
It's nothing more than fraud.
If a student tries to recycle a paper they wrote for another course and only changes 10% of the material, that student is disciplined for plagiarism.
What makes it different when a textbook publisher does it?
12
Professor here - I don't get the choice. I may find the book or textbook on Amazon or other places for cheap, but it is the campus bookstore that makes the orders. I don't understand to what degree they are beholden by contracts, distributors, etc., but I go ahead and tell my students in advance what the books are and let them know about places where they can find a more affordable option should they so choose. I also put a copy (or multiple copies, if they exist) on hold at the library and I try to avoid books and create a digital course pack that students can print out for free on campus.
Moreover, I think the exorbitant cost of tuition demands our attention far more than expensive textbooks. We're marginalizing students from the get-go by charging so much for a collegiate education.
189
@Kathryn Good point. Remember also that many college bookstores are now run by Barnes and Nobles or other bigger companies and are not part of the school!
33
@Kathryn I always tell my students to avoid the campus bookstore. It is often cheaper (and quicker) to order on line. Also, many of our readings are available electronically as ebooks via the university library. There is often a savy student who can find free copies of everything online.
17
Good point about the campus bookstores, @Kathryn. Publishers sell to them at net pricing, and the stores mark up the textbook prices by 33-45%. One chain has started requiring language in their contracts with the schools that prohibits publishers from selling the most affordable option, digital access, directly to students when their site is linked to the school's LMS (Canvas, etc.). The result? Students have to buy from the campus bookstore (which always has a higher markup) and some percentage of those campus bookstore sales gets kicked back to the school.
12
Totally agree. I’m returning this spring semester to teach a course in psychopathology at a community college and for the first time will be using open source materials as well as relevant material from my day job as a therapist. Textbooks, especially ones that really don’t need frequent updating, have been a ripoff.
120
It is ridiculous that textbooks should cost as much as they do. As a professor at a college who has written textbooks used in classes, I have always made sure that these are priced under $20, and at that I think they're too high. When I attended UCLA in the 1970s, textbooks were reasonably priced. New editions did not come out each year so that used texts could not be bought.
That universities and colleges agree to these practices for their professors is unconscionable.
180
@DD The textbooks are steep, but the tuition is the real problem. There's often two or three courses worth of material in a good text book. Many times, the professors can't even cover most of the material in the book in the time available. But the tuition is easily 10-20 times as expensive as the book.
I'm not surprised that professors like you and the author want to distratct the world from the high cost of tuition by blaming the text book authors.
5
I think if a professor charges me $250 to buy THEIR book (which I am required to buy), the university should let me charge them $250 for my exam paper (which they are required to grade). They may think their book is the best one for students to learn from...but I know my exam paper is even more essential to grading my exam.
This article seems a little out of date, at least based on my experience. My colleagues and I at the university level have been assigning low-cost or no-cost alternatives for the last five or six years.
The worst thing about textbooks, however, is not how much they do or don't cost. Worse than that is how few students ever open them.
5
I'm a history professor. Most of the books I assign are also available in digital format through our university library. I've found that working with the library to ensure that many sources are available this way has been tremendously helpful. If the students want hard copies of the books they can purchase them, but if they don't or can't there is another option.
1
The higher education system in the US has shifted from an engine that enabled upward mobility for Americans to one that serves the global elites. Every year, highly promising American youth are denied admission to selective universities to admit foreigners who can easily afford higher fees.
The price of textbooks is but a symptom of this shift and has very little to do with the professors.
1
Not all publishers charge $200 to $300 for textbooks. Cambridge University Press charges $81.36 on Amazon for Physical Mathematics a textbook for graduate courses in mathematical physics.
2
@Kevin Cahill
I paid $18.00 in the fall of 1979 for a copy of Arfkin (Mathematical Methods for Physicists) and it is listed, 7th edition, on Amazon, paperback edition, for about 40 bucks.
On the other hand I have a copy of Nuclear Chemical Engineering by Benedict, Pigford, and Levi which cost me around $30.00 in the mid '80s, latest edition goes for about $120.
1
Mr. Wu raises some important points, but he glosses over many others. Many professors - I include myself - are very concerned with the cost of books.
The underlying reason for outrageous textbook costs lies in the consolidation of publishers and their stranglehold on publishing textbooks. Just like they do for academic journals.
My policy was to not adopt a new edition of a text (if at all possible) until at least a semester and preferable a year had passed. Thus, my students could get used books. Each semester I taught a course, I'd get the instructor's copy - eventually acquiring multiple copies.
The first day of class, I'd hold a drawing after class for students who needed the book - they could drop-off their name and I'd loan my examination copies to the winners for the semester.
My wife has written 6 textbooks; we are just finishing her 7th and my first (digital journalism with Taylor & Francis) due out this coming spring. My wife's previous royalties haven't covered her costs. let alone paid for her time at minimum wage rates.
We know that we will lose money, not even covering our costs for gathering resources and buying software - but we believe sharing knowledge about high-quality journalism seems critical in these troubled times.
6
While in undergrad about 20 years ago, I had a professor tell us we needed to buy a $180 textbook.
He used half a chapter from it in the fourth week, just after the return period on textbooks closed at the university bookstore.
At the end of the semester, I sent him a "bill" for the cost of the textbook. When he demanded to know what I was trying to do, I told him I considered that textbook a rip off, particularly because he was (of course) the author. I was smart enough to wait until grades were published before sending it to him, and of course he didn't pay, but he got the point.
He still didn't change the textbook requirements, from what I heard, but since it was for a class in my anthropology major, I just told the other students in the department what a scam it was, and lo and behold, almost none were sold to that next class. Had I had access to Facebook back in 2002, I probably could have reached a wider group of people and he wouldn't have scammed a dime off anyone else, at least not that year.
2
Should social responsibility on the part of professors be limited to the price of text books (which pales in comparison to the cost of tuition anyway)? What about admission policies? The recent lawsuit against Harvard has laid bare the fact that one third of their entering class receives preferential treatment as legacies, athletes, children of major donors, and, yes, children of faculty? Perhaps faculty should express some of their outrage at that.
1
We try not to require students to buy books, but universities hamstring instructors in all sorts of ways. There are strict copyright laws such that we can only assign a certain percentage of published texts. So, we either don't assign reading or assign very little or ask students to buy a book/course reader.
What do you suggest?
1
@Leaf I suggest the instructors obey copyright laws. Publishing is not all about students. It's also about the publishers and authors who create the material--at considerable time and expense to themselves--and need to make money to continue doing so.
2
Why not start by reviewing the fair use provisions of the copyright laws that you cite.
Since you are an educator, you can photocopy “for educational purposes” whatever you please from a copyrighted work.
There is no such thing as “too much.”
It’s all fair use.
Another American attack on higher education. Ho-hum. A learned professor teaches a course and finds the available material lacking, or perhaps unavailable in a concise volume, so s/he writes and/or edits a book on the subject primarily for the benefit of students. The the book is required in the couse is not a scam. In my experience, the professor agains little from such publication. Publishers set the prices. The writer is very fortunate is s/he gets more than a buck from the sale of a $60.00 book. Most professors I know make seripous efforts to make the materials available through means other than purchase. Of course, most students probably do not know where the library is except as a place wheere the coke machines work.
5
@Sang Ze ok boomer
On the other hand, when the student sipping the mocha latte complains about being required to pay $7.95 for a Oxford World's Classic when they could read a Project Gutenberg amateur edition for free on line. . . .
1
And yet I can't help but think how quickly people buy the latest version of an iPhone
And don't even get me started on sports
6
I could not agree more! Textbooks are exceedingly expensive and in most cases not worth the cost. I spent years working Tim he textbooks industry and I can tell you despite their rationalizations, the exorbitant cost of texts is all about publisher greed. They are making insane profits and financing fancy sales conferences in places like Palm Springs, CA, Miami, San Francisco, off the backs of students. Shame on the greedy publishers!
1
@Colleen As a small publisher who publishes books many people think are expensive, all I can say is *I wish* I had "insane profits."
2
The Education-Industrial Complex needs to be shut down by Congress.
Like the desperate adjunct professors who have to sell their blood in order to eat--while administrators, who never teach, make over $100,000--the entire system is a blight on democracy.
No book should ever cost 3 figures...What will books cost ten years from now...a thousand dollars?
The students and taxpayers have had enough. Shut it down now!
1
I own a small independent book-publishing company. Publishing is a business. Everyone involved needs to make a profit. A publisher has to pay authors, several levels of editors, proofreaders, indexers, illustrators, sometimes translators to/from a foreign language, graphic artists, cover designers, and cover illustrators. There's marketing--press releases, free review copies, ads, etc. There's overhead--office space, office equipment, bookkeepers, tax accountants, and more. These expenses are all incurred whether the book is digital or printed, and whether a print copy is hardcover or paperback. Then there's printing, and shipping the printed books. The structure of US book sales requires that most books be sold through a certain very large wholesaler. They require a 55% discount off the book's cover price and the publisher pays for shipping to them. Many bookstores will only buy from this wholesaler, and readers much prefer to buy from bookstores, rather than different publishers. Unless you sell through this wholesaler, you won't sell nearly as many books. Bookstores usually require a 40% discount off the publisher's cover price. They have all their own overhead--bookstore space, paying employees, etc. So that's why books are "expensive." Obscure scholarly books, especially, don't render much profit.
4
As others have noted, not all professors require textbooks. I deliberately do not use textbooks for several reasons. First, I've taken far too many courses where the lectures completely overlapped what was in the textbook. If there is total overlap, why require a textbook at all? Also, if there is total overlap, what exactly is your contribution to the course? Second, some of the material I teach is so new it isn't in textbooks yet. Third, I don't want students having to pay for something they don't need. However, I do place multiple textbooks on reserve at the university library so students have the opportunity to consult a textbook (for those topics that I teach that are actually in a textbook) if they wish to do so. In my humble opinion, there are few (if any) reasons a student should ever have to purchase a textbook. I suspect this is still common practice because it is traditional, and while I hate saying so, because of laziness on the part of the professor.
Don't forget the publisher. When I taught in college, I'd be visited by textbooks salesmen who'd offer me kickbacks if I'd write an "introduction" to the next year's edition and list it as the one I was using. You guessed it, the content was the same.
68
@george eliot The publishers are the true villans here. They get their content from the professors free until the royalties come due...5% of sales would be generous. Why not call out the capitalist in this scenario? The support for Common Core by publishers is pathetic....still not reflecting the sweeping changes in literacy and mathematics education. Shame on publishers.
2
@george eliot God, what an awful racket college is these days. Everybody's got his hand in your pocket--the parents' pocket, that is. A red-white-and-blue swindle.
3
Yup, the textbook industry is a racket, but it seems to me that responsible institutions of higher ed are already taking measures to lower textbook costs. For example, our campus and several others are providing textbook options for students and making efforts to minimize textbook costs, and we have a campus faculty group tasked with creating improved alternatives. In fact, the textbook section of our bookstore, that once took a whole second floor, is now relegated to a corner, so the whole textbook scene on our campus is rapidly changing. Like Wu indicates, it's really up to individual faculty to make sure students are not being gouged by providing more thoughtful and cost-saving alternatives. It's also important to note that a lot of students can't digest too much material at one time, so developing manageable reading lists is more conducive to improved learning anyway.
i used to enjoy students' conversations in the elevator at the beginning of the semester. first thing they wanted to know about a course? whether they really needed the text. and the answer was often "no, anything important was covered in class." and they were often right.
Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, textbooks were in paperback or print.
Students could also buy used books.
So much for technological progress.
Makes you believe the Luddites were not off their rockers.
3
Much that is true here. In many liberal arts fields, it is unnecessary, even counterproductive, to use textbooks. Using used paperbacks, compilations, and the internet holds student costs down drastically. Textbooks should only be the last resort.
I taught in the humanities and never used text books. Instead I would assign paperback Penguin Classics. My teaching was closely connected to the texts. I even had students read out of them in class. This worked great for a long time, because when Penguin put out a new edition with a new cover the page numbers would be the same. Until the mid 2000s. Then the newer editions had different page numbers. Grrrrr. Was this deliberate?
I found that no matter what books I assigned, the bookstore would not buy enough of them for the whole class, because my university had poorer students and, as this article points out, some students tried to get by without even buying the book (even when it only cost $11). Every semester I found myself in the bookstore having a fight with the manager about this. It never worked.
1
Not mentioned in the article is that the big textbook publishers have a rigorous schedule of publishing a new edition every three years, with the apparent goal of rendering old editions useless, thereby undercutting the used market. As a math professor, I've seen this go on for years, and in many cases the "new" editions have nothing substantially new. In addition, the publishers seem to try to give students the impression that success will be elusive unless students also purchase study guides, solutions manuals, and supplements, all overpriced.
3
@mibd This is true, but there is a reason . . .Amazon. Publishers used to be able to sell one edition for a decade or more. Now we have close to 100% recycle rate, which means an edition sells exactly once. This means the initial expense has to cover the entire cost of the edition.
So yes, the new edition is designed to make the old edition useless. But. . . how else you gonna pay for the outlay. Online only with option to buy un-re-sell-able loose-leaf is probably the future.
1
I've thought about this a lot. I still use a fairly expensive textbook because I think it's the best available for my purposes, after regularly reviewing the alternatives, free and otherwise. I teach online and I think the textbook provides a stable, unfragmented backbone for an otherwise virtual experience. I distribute information about where to find the least expensive used copies, probably undermining my University bookstore. Many textbooks are inflated by color photographs that carry virtually no information, supplemental materials, and digital bells and whistles (sometimes useful, sometimes not). But a good textbook is a thing of beauty!
6
For a long time I have required out-of-print textbooks that could be readily purchased online for less than $20, and for this reason I'm contributing to the collapse of the textbook publishing industry (which is also perhaps to blame for the increasing prices?)
My university is starting to push OER textbooks (open access/free books). Publishers are consolidating, and the textbook market is quickly changing. I am surprised there are not more multi-format, textbook packages that harness the capabilities of the web by including interactive digital content and online help.
There is definitely no reason for any law professor to assign a casebook. The vast majority of casebooks include no actual explanation of the concepts (a practice that law professors generally think is beneath them, though that's a whole other issue); instead, they are simply compilations of legal opinions that are available online either for free or on legal databases that all law students can access. Many of the opinions have not been updated since the casebooks were written 40 years ago and use archaic language that provides a needless barrier to learning basic legal concepts. All the casebooks "add" is editing the cases down (which I found made them more confusing, as removing factual descriptions and citations takes away important context), and the discussion questions that go along with them add nothing useful.
Any law professor concerned about this issue should just give their students a list of opinions to download for free, and maybe recommend a hornbook for supplemental information.
2
Here's the easiest solution: at one of the universities where I taught, they required each department to decide which textbooks would be used for each regularly-taught course. The professors had to use that textbook for at least 3 years. Then the university bookstore would buy enough copies (mostly used) of each textbook and rent them to students. Students paid a fixed price each semester to rent all their textbooks - it was less than $200 a semester for *all* their books. It worked well. And it forced professors talk through their decisions about textbooks as a group and to work together find a few good books that they would be willing to use for years on end.
2
Tim,
You assume that all professors help rip off students. Your assumption is patently wrong. For ex. in one of my course, there is no textbook, just original papers and my notes. In other courses, I use older editions (and I am not the only one to do so. Read other comments.)
Moreover, if you take the time to read the comments, you will learn that a vast majority of us care for our students and their learning. Not all professors become so to make big bucks and we certainly have no interest in spending students money. Saying is offensive!
For whatever this may be worth!
3
This is not a new problem. As an art history professor I faced this problem back in the early ‘90s. Putting some of my own books on reserve in the college library was a partial solution at a small institution. In one course I taught, at least, the best textbook was printed with coffee-table quality reproductions on glossy paper that made it very expensive. I learned to trim the remainder of books I required. I never quite understood, however, and fear I still don’t understand, the attitude by which students treat books merely as temporary possessions to jettison, hopefully with resale value, at the end of the semester. I still have some of my books from my undergraduate days of over 40 years ago, cringeworthy margin notes and all. Textbook costs are real, but while focusing attention on cost let’s not lose sight of the question of value, which needs to be measured very differently, and perhaps requires some evangelization to be understood by some students.
2
I teach Human A & P at a community college. Since I began, the cost of mainstream A & P texts have risen with each edition until a bundle of materials was over $350.00. (It started at about $75.00) I compared 2 consecutive editions. The only difference was the introduction saying how the new edition was improved and a few illustrations had been changed. I switched to a free online text that offered a very reasonably priced hard cover text. The textbook industry is pricing itself towards extinction. The educational industrial complex is enabling the process.
5
I assume any reasonable analysis of textbook costs would find private equity behind the increases. There is nothing private equity firms love better than a sleepy market they can capture and pillage, and textbooks seem to fit that description.
6
Publishers have been bought out by conglomerates many times over. Try figuring out whom to call to get rights to xerox a short story to hand out to your students. Eventually one thinks, To hell with it, and xeroxes the story.
As a textbook author, I always place at least 3 copies of my required texts at the Reserve Desk at our university library, even though my text is about 1/2 the price as competitors. I make very little money on writing textbooks. In fact, I could make more money each year teaching a summer course for 5 weeks and forego the tedious hours of revising a text that will only make money for the bookstores. In fact, I had a man who buys textbooks from faculty members to re-sell tell me that he made about twice as much on my texts as I do. The point I am trying to make is that the producers of these texts RARELY make the money - it is the bookstores. Publishers are going out of business by the tens as I write this. The real issue here is the university book stores. They buy back new books that they have rented and then re-sell them as used books, thus, making about 3 profits for one book. Authors make about 8% of " net sales" - not hard to figure out that this is nothing for a text for a small course. Do the math. I have a colleague who writes textbooks and gives a monetary reward equal to the royalties he will have made from the class to the student who gets the highest grade - it is about $23. Go figure!
3
@Ronet Bachman If your bookstore is franchised to Follett or Barnes & Noble or whomever, they typically pay your campus 10%-12% on ALL sales of your book, whether new, used, digital, rentals, or whatever. Seems unfair, no? I think your work creating the book has more value than their work unpacking it and collecting $ for it, but what do I know?
1
I worked in a college bookstore and it is very work intensive. First you have to pry the reading list from the professor. Then make sure you order the proper edition. Then match the book to the particular shelf label. Then unpack. Sell. Unsold books are packed back up to publisher. Books are such an important part of learning and compared to the cost of tuition, the money spent is a tiny amount.
I taught an introductory statistics course for many years at a large University. I loved it, and looked at the material as a way to help them be informed citizens, but I knew, as a required course that few if any of the students would go into the field (although I tried to get a few converts). I allowed students an extra week or 2 to find a used copy of the book, even had a contest for who found the cheapest one. I also made sure any references to places in the book included the last 3-4 editions so students had more selection.
Then one year the 'powers-that-be' in the Dept decided that all intro level classes should use the same book with required a $95 subscription to a website supported by the publisher, basically making my class have a $95 entry fee. I hated the book and found out later the person who chose it did so because the publisher provided pre-made powerpoint slides and other material for the class, and thus all he had to do was click, click, click and read slides to the students.
And that was when I quit! It isn't always the Professor's choice. I had the highest ratings of all the instructors, huge wait-lists for my classes, but lost that fight. I now teach elsewhere, all material assigned free from the library. There is plenty available if one looks for it (or makes it themselves).
2
I teach at an elite private college and at the local community college. I've stopped organizing my readings and syllabi around textbooks. The prices are just too high and it's unfair to expect the students to pay that much. I encourage students to buy used copies of previous editions to reduce the cost or assign readings that are freely available on the internet.
3
Most of the comments below imply that a textbook is a textbook, that they are all basically the same in a given discipline and area. An atom is an atom.
In my years of teaching, in anthropology, I found major differences in texts in terms of the theoretical approaches and the perspectives used by different authors. I wasn't just teaching "facts," but also about perspectives, approaches, theoretical stands and biases.
It was not desirable to choose a text solely by price. Rather, the question was what I wished to convey, and how the text fit with my own goals for the course. What did I want them to take away from the course? Whenever it made sense and was possible I assigned (with the bookstore in cahoots) the not-quite latest version of the text, and used low cost or free supplements.
I recognize that the above may not apply to other fields, but in some cases, maybe it should.
6
@WJA In anthro, definitely!
Its up to professors whether they want to enrich Prof Mankiw or not. Eschew the latest and greatest edition of Principles of Economics with a 5 year old version. I am pretty certain Econ 101 has not changed drastically in the last 5 years.
Let Mankiw enforce his newest book at Harvard.
2
@K
Funny that you mention Prof Mankiw because I never forgot this article written by him in the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/upshot/i-paid-2500-for-a-hamilton-ticket-im-happy-about-it.html
where he basically is thankful for scalpers because otherwise all the seats to Hamilton would have been filled with people who could afford the theater's prices and there would have been no tickets available at $2500 a piece that enable wealthy theater go-ers to see the show without waiting months or years for available seats.
As a Harvard alum, I am thankful that I never took his class and enriched him by buying his over-priced textbook.
3
Why, oh why, are textbooks required at all? We live in a digital age. I am reading the New York Times article on a desktop, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. You cannot convince me that I can download and get full meaning of any book written but not a college textbook. There is not a college text which could not be sold for $30 as a download. There is not a college text worth $250 in print. I can share a hardbound text with any number of students so don't try the piracy thing about downloads. Questions anyone?
1
@Doverboy This assumes that everyone learns in the same way from the textbooks. The study we performed over 100 universities in California found that students had a preference for a print textbook (or they would spend money printing out their textbook pages).
For this reason, we need to spend time teaching students about digital literacy...and the use of digital tools in order to annotate these digital textbooks. It seems a given, but that's only for those who are at or have been educated through elite programs.
There's also a delivery method. Not everyone has a laptop or tablet from which to read their textbooks. Most students have a mobile phone, though. Have you ever tried reading from a mobile phone for a lengthy text? or problem solve?
So many complexities to consider. It sounds easy in our supposed digital revolution, but there's a swath of change that needs to occur across all levels of educational curriculum.
3
@Doverboy I agree with many of the criticisms of publishers that appear in these comments, and support efforts to provide fair-use or free access to online graphics, videos, and animations that are so important to the life sciences. However, reading (and even highlighting) a PDF on a screen is not equivalent cognitively to manual annotation and highlighting of a real hardcopy-in-hand text, which allows almost instantaneous flipping between distant pages for review and comparison -- something no e-text or PDF has ever allowed. Likewise, note-taking by computer or tablet in class is never cognitively as effective as writing notes by hand and then re-writing and clarifying them after class. Just sayin....
5
KB
Thank you! A bit more than a decade ago during the Year Of The Brain the collection of neuroscience experts had two major recommendations for education.
1. 14 and over start school at 10 am.
2. Cursive writing should be taught early as it coordinated various parts of the brain to bring greater understanding and retention than typing or printed notes. And it forced focusing on the most important. As did drawing the pictures on the board.
If I have an excellent printed book to add to excellent lecture notes, I would usually prefer to pay several hundred dollars more, even in the 1960s, and lay pipe summers than not get the finest education and readings available.
If the course was worth taking, and the book was excellent, it was far easier to mark it up with 4 colors underlining and little numerals above and in front of multiple important elements.
I definitely kept the book as I could high speed refresh 10-60 years later. Red for key names, terms defined, Theorems Th: 3.4 (Chp 3 Th 4), Dfn 3.7, Lammas Lm 3.8.
And I cursive wrote flash cards for these. 30 years later still a quick, fast review as I walk down a street and then pause each chapter and recall in sequence.
Green underline was for references, authors, book or article. Purple for key words of example.
Do not give me a book or problems that disappear at the end of the quarter.
1
The textbook I use for lower division microeconomic principles can be bought online for less than $20. However, if my students want to use their student loan money they are required to buy it at the bookstore for many multiples of that. I have worked for years to keep textbook prices low, and this rule is the single greatest impediment.
Publishers then change the edition and cut off supply of earlier editions that would be far less expensive. If you want to argue about power, then look at publishers and not teachers who are in fact working hard to keep costs low for their students. We are not "spending their money" but rather trying to come up with the best, easiest and cheapest way to deliver the material. Our power is limited by the fact that we have to face our students every week and we see the impacts of expensive education on them.
Also, I fear that the glorious free textbook platforms that are proliferating on the web will evolve into the entry point of a black hole that will put profit-seeking business people between my students and the resources they need. I recently had a gleeful administrator show me that these platforms now offer sample syllabi. I am supposed to be happy about that?!
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@PJM What? Students who get student loans MUST buy their teχtbooks at the student store???????? Is this practice widespread?
Departments should be responsible for producing text materials for students. Students should pay no more than printing cost for the materials.
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Overpriced text books! Sound the Alarm! and forget about 30,000 a year in tuition so undergrads can be taught by adjuncts only paid for their classroom time are making less than the minimum wage.
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I used to teach Spanish at a college. The books (incl code) were over $200, which I found ridiculous. As an adjunct, though, I had to assign the text the dept stipulated. By mistake, when I once was speaking with a salesman (from the publishing company) I realised that the college bookstore 's price included a mark up of 35 or 40%! (I can't remember exactly... it was 5 years ago). I questioned the bookstore manager (now a Barnes and Nobles) about this, and he said the college demanded this markup. I don't know if this is true or not. I quit soon after. But I don't think it is fair to say it is solely the professor's fault. The professors are not pocketing any cash.... but the book stores, publishers and colleges are.
7
13 years ago, I realized I had students who could not afford the two texts required for my course. I asked the Dean of Student Affairs for assistance. She began a no-interest loan program for students and forwarded to me the monies for buying used textbooks that I could put on 48 hour reserve in the library. The rest of the readings were made available by the library through distribution in the online reading venue.
Nevertheless, I received a phone call from a woman who told me her house had burned down and she was living in a women's shelter with her mother and daughter. All of her textbooks and her computer had gone up in smoke. Again I asked the Dean of Student Affairs to resolve this issue, which she did by buying textbooks and finding housing for this student.
This article covers several interesting issues. How to teach well with the best textbooks and how to help students who cannot afford these resources. The problem of expensive textbooks can be resolved by working together with publishers and university administrators to improvise as we encounter low income students.
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How many professors assign books that they themselves had written or reviewed? I recall at least 3 from my undergraduate years. Conflict of interest, anyone?
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@Roy
I believe some colleges and universities forbid this practice - or at least require some documentation to claim that their book is the only suitable one for a very specialized course. Even with such rules, I expect there could be wide variance in rates of compliance and enforcement.
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@Roy Professors are hired for their knowledge and expertise, and publishing academic work in their field is a requirement of the job. It's not a conflict of interest, it's why that person is teaching that class in the first place.
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Yes. I find it so frustrating when people think they are being cheated by buying their prof’s book. That typically means you are being taught by an expert in the field, and they can only give you an outline of that in class, so you need to read the book.
2
The author neglects to write about textbook rentals, both in print and digital. Most undergraduate textbooks will be obsolete after the student graduates. There’s no need to keep them.
4
Art history textbooks are expensive, and many art history surveys present art in a tired, racist, misogynistic narrative. In Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History, 2019, concepts in the introduction are show with works primarily by white men. The ONE work by a woman, Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jack-in-the-Pulpit" is compared with Ben Shahn's "Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti." Shahn's work gets more text & emerges as powerful, while O'Keeffe's painting comes across as simplistic. The art by non-European artists is also marginalized through comparisons with European works. Under "Different Ways of Seeing" there is a "Portrait of Te Pehi Kupe" by John Henry Sylvester, It's compared with what is identified as a "Self-Portrait" by the Maori leader Te Pehi Kupe himself. The source for this image is accessible online- Leo Frobenius' "Childhood of Man: A Popular Account of the Lives, Customs, and thoughts of the Primitive Races" -what message does this title send? The drawing is by Frobenius and it's after a drawing that Te Pehi Kupe made of his facial tattoo. He had to draw it in order to sign contracts with Europeans. There is no self-portrait tradition among Maori leaders from this time. The British created the practice of drawing moko to get signatures on contracts for Maori land. These agreements are still controversial.
1
It is also the responsibility of the authors to reduce this abuse. I am the co-author of a textbook on Environmental Science. Originally, it was printed by a major published as a book. But when I saw that my students were being charged an outrageous sum, and that I was profiting fro the obscene price, I bought back the copyright and published it electronically through a smaller publisher. Yes, I make less money, but I can revise it more easily and I can look my students (and students at other Universities) in the eye and require them to buy the book.
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@Robert K What is the book, and who is the publisher?
I give him this. Professor Wu certainly walks the walk. If you thought he might only be advocating for cheaper books as long as someone else wrote them, you'd be wrong. He's written quite a number of serious books listed on Amazon, all priced less than $16.
Thumbs up, Professor!
13
Expensive textbooks, and the practice of trivially updating them to make used books appear obsolete, is a big problem.
In the grand scheme that includes universities wasting people's money with bloated bureaucracies, monopolistic retail for other goods and services and sometimes questionable or illegal use of grants and graduate student labor, textbooks may be little more than a distraction.
Reigning in textbook costs is a fine thing, but doing that while ignoring these larger concerns borders on complicity.
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@Alan Those "bloated bureaucracies" and so make for a good right wing trope. But as a lecturer at Michigan and, before that, at Washington, I haven't seen it in reality.
College bookstore person here: In my over 40 years of working with professors, publishers, and students, I can confidently say two things. 1) Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and exorbitantly-priced college textbooks. Unfortunately, publishers are businesses and they are in business to make money for their authors and for themselves. They need to keep making money. So today we have new editions out every 6 months, access codes, and slick advertising to professors to "require" their product. 2) Expensive textbooks are everybody's fault and nobody's fault. Like taxes, where everybody pays too much for what they think they get, students don't really have a choice and have to pay for something they don't want in order to succeed in the course. I've learned that you figure out a way to pay for what you value, whatever that is including textbooks.
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@Julie B I was a career general books bookseller in a
a college bookstore. When I helped out during book rush, it was very work intensive. As almost anything is. The return on investment in the book business is a paltry 3 percent.
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@Julie B
That is ridiculous. Ive attended colleges and universities of all types in many locations both state schools and private. In my experience it was only the private school which did not make some effort to reduce the cost of books. I have had some professors who wrote the text themselves and had it photocopied and it could be bought for the price of the reproduction. Others simply eliminated the text book. There are many alternatives to this ridiculous market. You are just one of the many people who profit from the scheme whether you like to admit it or not.
As a long time California community college faculty member (and president of my local academic senate) I thought long and hard about these issues. In the case of my institution, one designed to serve students without the advantages that some university students may have and who are often working their way through college, the cost issues are particularly acute.
As long as we recognize some of the qualifiers in this article (for example, that a very good and relevant text may be worth a higher price — and that free materials of high quality are not yet available in all areas), the article includes a number of critical and important points.
However, one is missing. The difficulty in dealing with costs is not purely about text book pricing — and surely not about irresponsible faculty who don't care. In fact, the difficulty in dealing with the costs of higher education can be largely traced to the decades-long decrease in public funding. This has led to significant increases in tuition and other costs, along with decreases in funding for scholarships and other assistance.
That even larger issue is perhaps even more important than its effect on text book costs.
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@Dan Mitchell The increase in tuition is directly related to the ease of getting approved for a loan, period. If the gov't will back the loan, we can increase the cost.
2
I am a Professor for a Mid-Atlantic State University. We have only e-texts at no cost to the students. So not every Professor/University is looking to rip off students.
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My son, who is enrolled at a large southern university, was randomly assigned to a calculus class where the professor decided to use his own textbook that cost ~$250. The other calculus classes, covering the same material, used a much less expensive book.
Another professor required students to pay $250 to use his 3-D derivative program. None of the other professors, teaching the same material, required this program. Students cannot avoid this cost because it is required to complete homework assignments.
All of the colleges, universities, and high schools only need one textbook for algebra, trigonometry, calculus I, II and III, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, java, javascript, C, C+, and python for the entire country. Furthermore, we only need one professor for each of those classes for the entire country. Everybody should take the same exam at the same time.
The first 1 or 2 years of college should be obtained at the nearest school whether that be at a university or community college. We shouldn't have to pay for the "university" experience if we don't want to.
The colleges and universities should also be required to provide low-cost nutritious meals that cost less than $2/meal. Rice/beans and peanut butter/jelly may not sound great, but it is better than an extra $20K in debt.
If the professors will not help cut costs, we will help them cut costs.
Let's return American education to meritocracy and reject the oligarchy.
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@JAR Not everyone does this. I teach CS at Michigan. In only one of my classes do we even have a text, and it's $45. I am also the author of a commercial software product that I've made a living off of for 30 years. I post a download on my faculty page for free use by anyone at Michigan, students, faculty or staff.
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The points made in the opinion article are also true for kids in private schools (k-12) who must usually replace all textbooks yearly at outrageous prices. I'm sure someone was benefiting from this.....
We parents were given no choice about it.
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@RLiss Well, you had a choice about whether your child would go to public or private school. You made the more expensive choice.
I once had a professor in undergrad who assigned us three books that HE had either written or co-authored, and we only opened one of them once, throughout the entire semester. The entire class complained to the administration, and I noticed the next year he no longer worked there, but I don't know if that was as a result of our complaint or for another reason.
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After completing an M.A. several decades ago and teaching at a midwestern university for 2 years, I went to work for an educational publisher specializing in textbooks for elementary and middle schools. The first thing I learned was that these books are not written by the "authors" whose names appear on them, but by me and my colleagues, in teams. I might be assigned to write 3 or 4 chapters, while another editor would write the same number. I was never told to read the other chapters. I focused exclusively on the chapters I was to write. The next thing I learned was that there was enormous political pressure. We were told that photos including black persons could not account for more than a certain percentage of overall photos in the book. Photos of MLK were banned. I hope things have changed.
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I think it's nice everyone has a nice story about how THEIR professors cared, or how THEY care and don't assign expensive books. Please remember that anecdotal evidence is nice, but it does not necessarily provide strong evidence against Dr. Wu's points. If all the comments about the nice caring professors they know were a universal truth, then this article would not have been written. I just finished my Ph.D. and I always had to find creating solutions. Yes, one can be creative. But being creative comes at a cost. Once again, the poor suffer and the rich don't. For example, if I'm a poor student who has to go to the library to check out the one book that is in the shelves, then I have to hope another student hasn't already checked it out. If I do get it, and scan some of the pages - think of the time spent scanning those pages! All of that money translates into money...if you have no money, you spend more time trying to find "creative solutions" and are always playing catch up.
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At the University of Washington at least in the 1970s the fraternities would hide the assigned readings in different locations or even behind books! Only their members read the assignments!
@Diana There is already a massive OER movement for free or low cost textbooks. But authors such as the one for this Op Ed didn't bother to do any research. Those institutions that are doing the most good are regularly from public non-research universities, so not the elites or the ivys. This author is maddening in that he did no research to promote even the work of CUNY just down 5th Avenue from Columbia's campus. But, NYT lends this professor a pedestal and megaphone, not those faculty in the trenches actually educating a majority of the population in higher ed. (Stats to back this up abound.)
As a college professor, a few years ago I tried to convert my STEM discipline's Intro "101" course to use a free textbook. It's a subject that hasn't changed in a long time, and whose material is fairly standard, so I thought it would be easy to find a free alternative. Wrong. I picked the best free textbook available, and was disappointed to find it was not nearly as easy to read or understand as the pricey publisher textbook. And in fact, even this "free" textbook was written at the cost of ~$2 million dollars in NSF grant funding. So after that disappointing semester, I switched back to the proprietary text, and have a newfound appreciation for the difficulty of the problem. I use an older edition so students can buy cheap used copies, and keep a copy on reserve at the college library for 2-hour loan.
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@Free to Be Me Why not scan the textbook and have it available for download?
@Doverboy
Ever hear of copyright infringement?
If caught you and your school would be liable for damages.
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@Free to Be Me Agreed. Free stuff is rarely of the same quality as the stuff you have to pay for.
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Definitely the cost of textbooks is insane, particularly with respect to the way they mark up prices on new additions after some minor window-dressing. For my large (150-200 student) junior level course, I tell the students they can get any of the four recent editions of the textbook and they will be fine. This means their textbook generally costs less than 10 dollars when bought used on Amazon, relative to the >$100 most recent edition, i.e. as a class we potentially save $15,000 each semester. It's more work for me when I need to assign homework problems but the students appreciate it.
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Thank you @David for using, and advocating for, a simple and readily implemented solution to this problem
@David That's only a problem is you assign homework problems out of the textbook. But I don't know why anyone would do that. I certainly don't in my classes. If you're good enough to teach the class, you should be able to create you own problems.
My worst textbook experience was the textbook for my statistics class, a requirement for my Masters degree in botany. It came with an answer book because the problems were complex and you could at least check to see if you were o the right track. One day, after I had spent the entire weekend on one problem for which I couldn't come up with the right answer I consulted with the professor who said, "Oh, yeah, the answer book has a lot of errors," and gave me a corrected copy. But he didn't tell the rest of the class! This was at the U of Washington back in the early 70s and the book had been written by the chair of the math department. You would think they would want all the students to have correct copies! The final exam was worth 125 points and I got the second highest score of 115. The class median was 30 points! (No wonder most students took it pass/fail.)
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Susan in NH
I all too well remember the ethics issues!
I work at a university where a large number of our students are first generation college students and/or Pell Grant recipients. We are working to encourage faculty to use freely available textbooks or resources that the library already pays to license as at least part of their texts so that there's not an additional $200 per class that get spent.
Some faculty are very open to this. For others, it's more of a challenge, sometimes because they're teaching introductory sections where the textbooks are mandated by the department. That doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't change - it should. But it does mean that a single professor (or adjunct, or grad student) teaching only 1 or 2 sections of that intro class can't easily change from the the adopted textbook. But over time, I believe this change will happen for many class. We can see it happening at other schools, like Tidewater Community Colleges Z degrees, that have no text book costs and it should happen here.
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Rarely do I require students to buy text books for my classes at a state university. Yes, the obscene prices are appalling, but just as distressing is that most students simply will not read them. Unless reading assignments are scored/graded in some manner, they will ignore these books, no matter how much they cost. With 10-20 such assignments per class and 100-150 total students - well, that wouldn't leave much time for research, publication, office hours, and committee work would it?
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@Esperanza True. I'm in computer science at Michigan.
My students are all really bright. But I still find that if I want students to learn something, it has to be in my lecture and if it's a difficult concept, I have to create an assignment. It is NEVER enough to say, go read this. They won't do it.
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Thank you for this article. It's relevant to the high cost of education in America described in another article.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that instructors generally cover only one or two chapters from a large, hardback text. The voluminous content helps justify the exorbitant cost, I suppose, and the author doesn't control what the professor chooses to cover. But from the student's POV, it's a lot of money for the little they use. In addition, carrying three or four 10-pound books, plus notebooks, etc. all over campus is hard on the spine.
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In the early 1990s, I was a teaching assistant for a large introductory biology class at Brown University. The professor for the class was the co-author of a well-known college biology textbook, which he assigned. But the university had a policy that royalties for textbooks with faculty authors had to be turned over to the university - and if I'm remembering correctly, the scholarship fund - due to the inherent conflict of interest.
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@MIchael Fessler That is true of my university as well.
This misses the huge changes the have completely upset the textbook business. Between Amazon and pirated pdfs, the market and profitability of the textbook business has taken a nosedive. The incentives for authors to write are greatly decreased, especially for well constructed tutorial textbooks -- by comparison quickly assembled research topic monographs proliferate, mostly to burnish the reputations of authors but not their pocketbooks. At engineering education and research conferences, the number of presenting publishers has plummeted -- too expensive, not enough sales. It's been explained to me by a publisher that the laws of supply and demand often don't apply -- halve the price and sales stay the same; double the price and sales stay the same: makes sense to double the price.
Some states (Florida) put pressure on faculty to reduce textbook costs.
Otherwise, Mr. Wu's commentary could have been published 40 years ago and 30 years ago and ...
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Hear. I work in the industry. Quality “texts”—including electronic exercise-based teaching materials, which the industry is increasingly moving toward—cost a great deal of time, expertise and effort to develop and produce. Ensuring effective illustrations, clear writing, good pedagogy, engaging ancillary materials, and up-to-date information, in addition to securing intellectual property rights (hooboy) and compensating authors for their efforts is incredibly expensive. Sadly models such as the “Netflix” type can mean the product is undervalued and publishers increasingly can’t afford the talent to write and produce it.
I know that physical prepackaged tomes at hundreds of dollars a pop aren’t the future or the answer, but any teaching materials, if they’re any good, will always be “dear” in some respect, and require a wide range of skillsets to bring out.
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There seems to be an assumption, in Wu’s editorial and in the comments, that students are required to buy the assigned books in order to have access to the basic course material. The author nods to the possibility of getting that material some cheaper way (such as buying used textbooks or reading them in the library) but still assumes one has to read the assigned texts.
Teachers of college literature courses can tell you that many students have no interest in reading the assigned works: instead, they buy “study guides” such as CliffsNotes and SparkNotes.
Similarly, many law students past the first year are sophisticated enough to eschew reading cases and other basic source materials, opting instead for “study notes” often circulated samizdat.
The free market does sometimes produce efficient options.
I love this op-ed, but too bad it didn't cover the issue of American's inaccessibility to the overseas (and much cheaper) versions of these same textbooks. ... or why the e-books are practically the same price as the print versions.
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@VJR As a publisher, I can tell you why e-books are almost as expensive as printed books. Almost all the same costs are incurred whether the book is printed or not.
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As a former professor of online and classroom courses, all of them graduate level, I was routinely able to assemble online resources, some available electronically through the university library and some freely available on the open Internet from properly vetted government, scientific or research laboratory resources.
The cost to students was negligible or non-existent. Almost without fail such diversity of scholarly perspective offered value in its own right that a single $200 textbook could never provide. In addition to shaving unaffordable costs, students thrived intellectually on these resources and were better motivated to conduct their own research from diverse sources.
Although such a practice might not apply in all cases, it requires painstaking advance work the professor's part. But it works, more often than not providing students better research material for less money and less undue worry about making ends meet.
It also encourages an on-going re-freshening of professorial research, keeping required student reading up-to-date and contemporaneously relevant.
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Every stakeholder acts according his or her own interests. Publishers need to make a living. With the market flooded with used copies, it is not surprising that publishers push for frequent updates. Professors generally require readings because they are part of the university curriculum. Assigning a good textbook is often a good way to achieve this goal. Students, at any level, would prefer not to buy textbooks at any price because it costs money that they may not have. Even if they are assigned non-textbook readings, there is no guarantee that students will do the readings because they are busy with other priorities.
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This was an issue 40 years ago, when I was in college. But then we viewed professors as more mercenary and even fraudulent. Used textbooks were widely available and reasonably priced. But the downside was that there were annual updates that professors tended to emphasize in class and on the exams. They were nefariously attempting to beat back the used textbook market. Back then, we told it like it was. Mr. Wu goes easy on a fraudulent industry-wide practice.
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Let’s not lump all professors into one group. Many of us work really hard to use cheaper alternatives and, even though it doesn’t count toward tenure and promotion, we spend a lot of time developing our own course materials. Let’s also make it blame professors for the forces really driving high textbook prices: current copyright law and the way publisher are taxed. Professors, like students, are caught in the middle too.
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I found that most of the students in the technically capable majors such as Engineering or Computer Science ended up pirating the books and sharing the PDFs.
Speaking as someone who has curated and overseen reserve collections in academic libraries for 11 years, I can agree with most points in this article. The students ultimately suffer from greedy textbook publishers and the rapid pace of yearly editions. I support Openstax, but there is still a long way to go in terms of of quality in peer review of the material in these "free" monographs. We are taking steps in the right direction by moving away from relying solely on traditional textbooks for class, thankfully.
2
What an amazing article. Never would have thought of it. About a decade ago after teaching commercial leasing for maybe 12 years, I discovered that a textbook I authored was being sold to the students at the university bookstore for over $150. Since I authored that particular text, I was able to move the publishing to Lulu Press and have it published, updated and bound for I think around $29 per book with direct shipping to the students included. I felt better but never dreamed this was a general condition.
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I retired 12 years ago. I was a professor at a state university.
Here is another problem: "Revised" editions of textbooks. They would come out about every three years, and would be little changed. HOWEVER, then you could no longer enable students to purchased used ones. You were forced to force upon students the new, slightly altered, version. Some texts had 10-12 revisions. What?
What I did when I could was game the system. I could put, on reserve, in the library, one chapter from a book. So I put one chapter from several books, and created my own, cheap, textbook.
Know what? Students didn't really like that, although it saved them a lot of money. They had to go to the library and photocopy their own textbook, and that was too aversive to them.
I give up. I did my best to give students high quality readings and not have them need to pay high quality money for it, but it was actually never appreciated by anybody.
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@Travelers :
did the students understand what your point was, and why? Seems unbelievable they didn't do it.
@Travelers If the revised text was little different than any of the previous, wouldn't a simple solution have been to advise students in your syllabus to buy whichever was cheapest? If they were all the same, why did it matter to you which one they bought? Okay, if you were assigning readings with page numbers rather than chapters, maybe that might have required some work to figure what page went where in the new edition, but really, how hard is that?
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@Nicole Hamilton
Tried, but it was impossible. The problem was exams. I would have had to make sure the answers to exams were in several different editions of textbooks.
Your comment sounds like "maybe you could have tried harder." Really. Do you really want to come across that way?
Not only that, but previous editions were no longer available. They couldn't buy them on Amazon in those days. Where do they pick up earlier editions? When the current edition was the latest one, the bookstore would buy them back, and then students could buy them.
So, please knock off the lecture. I tried, and failed. The solution is not to blame professors, as Dr. Wu is doing. A lot of us cared about this, and none of us could find good solutions.
And as I said, the cheapest one was often not liked by students. I got criticized in my course evaluations for trying to help them. Some payoff that is.
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I really felt this pinch as a scholarship student at a private college. It became nearly intolerable as I moved into upper-division and graduate-level physics and math courses. The very small market size for these textbooks, combined with the labor-intensive demands of formatting text and equations and graphics, made them enormously expensive back in the day. My quantum field theory textbook (Itzykson and Zuber) was well over $200 in the early 80's. I see that technology has greatly decreased that price; it ranges from $22 to $67 on Amazon.
I also had an organic chemistry text that was authored by the professor. It was a decent text, but not cheap. Rumor has it that the Ferrari in the parking lot by the chemistry building belonged to him. I'm sure the car was not purchased from his textbook royalties, but it certainly suggested that he lacked an understanding of his poorer students.
2
Textbooks in English Lit surveys average around $100 a course. When teaching surveys (courses studying many works), I assign anthologies with a high standard of notes and commentary. Such texts often use modern translations of Plato, Beowulf, etc. that are clear to modern students. Those I use run around $50-$90 and can be rented for a fraction of that, to be returned at the end of the semester.
Updated translations of classic texts make a lot of difference in whether students understand them. These translations and notes are under copyright. They are not free online. But should advanced college students be advised to read antiquated (but free) nineteenth-century translations of "Don Quixote" online? Do you want a polite 20th c. translation of Juvenal's satires into English, or the real thing--invective and all?
Books are part of education, whatever the field of study. For those short on resources, libraries exist for borrowing textbooks--as I did when a student. And there is always the option of just renting a book for a semester and returning it.
Teachers try to work with translations and notes that clarify classic texts through appropriate annotations. This helps students to excel.
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A college professor here. All salient points, but a major flaw to article's central question is "But some really aren’t, especially when there are cheaper or free alternatives of equal quality out there."
Yes and No. So the point is without editorial and curative oversight by the professors vetting textbooks, then I agree it is as unfair to assign a inferior textbook to a student, as it is to prescribe unnecessary medication (the cost of the later being to one's health and pocket book) to a patient.
As any good economist would respond - It depends.
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Professor Wu writes: "...I long felt guilty teaching first-year criminal law out of a mediocre book that was both detested by my students and priced at $235..."
Having taught Criminal Law and related law classes at CCs through graduate level on both Coasts for almost 50 years, I can say I have seen the textbook market and student demographics change dramatically. What I found out almost immediately decades ago upon widespread access to the internet on and off-campus is that the law can be taught through .gov and state websites by sampling their respective statutory and case law resources.
With college library subscriptions, students can learn the basics of research. And then there's my contribution to the marketplace of ideas: a well-developed, on point, series of lectures and problem-solving scenarios. As technology evolved, intermittent podcasts (mine and the experts in the field) and video materials are standard in my courses.
Developing guided learning class packs from public domain and OER materials the provide a viable alternative to costly textbooks.
Cost to students: None
I am curious to know if these options, or their equivalent, are available in other disciplines.
Best wishes from a professor who never met a campus she didn't like!
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Buy the international editions. Massively cheaper. Because just like in healthcare, we massively subsidize the rest of the world...
2
Professors, Professors, Professors! Again nothing about the instructors and adjuncts who actually teach the bulk of university lower levels. The adjuncts who don't get to choose their books, who don't have offices, or time to design courses, or benefits throughout the year, and who necessarily have to use books with online components because it is the only way to outsource all the preparation that they are never paid for.
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@M23 Depends. When I first started teaching at Washington as an affiliate (same as an adjunct elsewhere) in electrical engineering, I certainly had the right to pick my own textbooks. And I did.
@Nicole Hamilton There are over 6,000 post secondary schools in the U.S. I've worked at four. I have never been allowed to choose a book. Only make recommendations, which have never been acted upon, unless it was to continue using the book.
2
@M23 Oof! So sorry! It shouldn't be that way. I guess I've been lucky. I have always been able to choose my own books at both Washington and now at Michigan.
2
As a professor, I always informed students of alternatives to the text, including telling them which is the earliest edition that would be acceptable (textbooks change more slowly than the field, but many do change). Some books are essential (a student with an older edition of a zoology lab manual is a lot better off with that than with no manual at all). I also pointed them to web sites that do searches across multiple vendors (Amazon does not always have the lowest price). I also tried to use web-based and other options where available and appropriate.
On the other side of the coin, students who receive book vouchers as part of their financial aid get their textbooks free or at a discount, but must use them at the campus bookstore (which in many schools is a for-profit enterprise). They do, however, get to sell them at the end of the semester to their colleagues who don’t have such aid, which can yield hundreds of dollars.
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And half the time when you went to sell back your books, they wouldn’t buy them because they were using an updated version the next semester.
1
@Smilodon7: If you were trying to sell them back to the bookstore, yes that could well be true. But students have other options (e.g., eBay) now.
I completely sympathize about the increasing costs of college education. but while $2000/year seems like a lot, textbooks were about $300/year in the 1970s (when EVERYTHING cost 7X less than it does today). Tuition has increased to a much greater degree. And the reasons for that have nothing to do with the cost of textbooks.
As a textbook author, I have long been frustrated with the soaring costs of my own book. I've tried to keep costs down my providing my own images and drawings or seeking out those in the public domain, but ultimately I have no control over the final price.
Creating free textbooks is fine, but shouldn't the author get paid for their work? Aren't we already taking lower salaries at academic institutions compared to working in the private sector? Should regular academic authors be forced to compete with those who are somehow rich enough to put them out for free?
I would like to see non-profit university presses or professional societies step forward to put out low-cost books with the goal of keeping textbooks affordable, but also paying authors the royalties they deserve.
16
The for-profit aspect of education is very disturbing. Makes no sense that in (almost) 2020 our children are still purchasing hardcover textbooks.
1
While the author's main point about the exorbitant cost of textbooks is well-taken, as a college mathematics professor (and textbook author) myself, I would say that he is underestimating the awareness of this issue among professors today. Some of us have taken "cuts" in royalties to be able to guarantee reasonable prices for our books. My department is very cognizant of this problem and has taken steps to reduce the cost of the books students use in several ways. For our calculus courses, we offer an option of a loose-leaf version of the book pre-punched for a three-ring binder. That reduces the cost significantly, even including the cost of the binder. I have chosen books for advanced courses specifically because they would be available to students in pdf electronic format at no charge through a deal negotiated with the publisher at our request by our library. Whenever there is a free option that is a reasonable source for the course I want to teach, I will use that. I know that not everyone takes these costs into account in choosing textbooks for their courses. But a lot of us do.
10
@John Little Professor Little, you mention using a calculus textbook in loose-leaf version to reduce the cost to students. Would you consider using older editions of the same text? They can usually be purchased or rented in hardbound editions for significantly less than the flimsy and impossible to resell loose-leaf editions. How much has calculus changed since the release of the previous edition of any of the commonly used texts?
1
@Todd Yes, in principle. The problem there is that if you want to assign a problem set using problems from a textbook, then you run into incompatibilities between editions (part of the racket that the publishers are running here, as has been pointed out by many other responders). Unless everyone has the same edition, then managing assignments gets to be a nightmare. And it's not always true that a previous edition that's cheap enough is available in sufficient numbers for 10 - 15 sections of first year calculus with 30 - 35 students in each section.
1
Yup. I went through this as a student (didn't have to deal with access codes though). It was ridiculous and angering. I often wondered why math books had a "17th edition", for how often is math going to "change"?
3
This article is dead on. I taught various English and journalism courses for 20 years, and only required a textbook when the administration insisted. Literature books are a real scam, and no good composition teacher would use a text book. Much of that material is available on the 'net.
At one school, a salesman used to come around once a year and buy all the sample copies that were sent to faculty, so he was a welcomed guy.
If professors really cared about the rising cost of higher education, it is ridiculous to force students to purchase the latest edition textbooks that routinely exceed $200 per copy. Moreover, given the access to academic journal articles and e-books on electronic databases such as J-Stor where downloading and distributing items for the purposes of instruction falls under “fair use,” I view the assigning of traditional textbooks as intellectual laziness on the part of professors: take some time and put together a course e-reader that brings together material written by multiple scholars with multiple perspectives to enliven your subject. Finally, universities are about the production of new knowledge and students should be required to read original and latest research. In a very important way, if your professor is teaching out of a textbook, he or she is cheating you out of an up-to-date course on your topic.
Textbooks are too expensive?! Well, that certainly hasn’t changed! Back in the day, at legendary, Barrons Textbook Exchange, on Hillel Place at Brooklyn College, used textbooks were the rage! Still, one of the biggest rackets going! PS Now, it’s gotcha, with the access code.
1
This describes exactly what happened to me in 1963 in an honnors program course. Nothing much has changed, I suppose.
I went to college in the mid 80’s. I thought this was a scam then and it seems like it’s even worse now.
2
I am using the free OpenStax.org Chemistry 2/e paired with Chem101 online homework for $25/semester. An (unnecessary) hardbound copy of the 1300+ page text is less than $50 on Amazon. Based out of Rice University, OpenStax offers textbooks in many subjects. Bill & Melinda Gates, among many others, support the organization.
2
Best course I ever had was in 1972 at the U of Iowa where the Math Statistics Prof charged us $1.00 to cover mimeo costs.
3
I have two science degrees and have experience very low cost in text books.
I have just completed my Master’s degree, I only had to buy a couple of books. One was $120 and the other was $10. In most cases I was able to rent my textbooks for under $50 for the semester. The rest of my readings were available through the library, which I could print or leave in as PDF.
I also had very little cost in books for my undergrad degree.
1
I have had a couple different undergraduate careers at a few different colleges. I have also worked in textbooks at a university bookstore. So I have been in classes with professors who assigned their own book(and then put it to little or no use). I have also seen professors deliberately wait to submit their textbook orders for the upcoming semester until after the university bookstore's buy back period(when the students would receive 50% of the original purchase price of the book) and then require the store to buy only new copies of their book.
That being said, I have also had many professors who deliberately chose cheaper texts, eschewed online materials with expensive codes and (most sensibly of all) used previous editions widely available on the used market for reasonable prices.
Hopefully the OpenSTAX approach to making textbooks free/affordable and readily available to all continues because I foresee continued consolidation in a textbook business already dominated by two major players (Pearson and McGraw Hill). This will lead to even higher prices for students and fewer choices for professors.
1
I realize criticizing the price of textbooks is a soft target, but it is a bit rich coming from a professor at Columbia where the annual tuition, just tuition, is $65k. Does he feel this cost is justified? Yes, Columbia has scholarships, but some types of scholarship money can also be used to purchase course materials. And he also hasn't been paying attention to the competitive marketplace, where what students are paying for course materials has been declining for several years now. Costs are less than $500/year per the National Association of College Stores, and there are other sources of comparable data. Can the same be said of other educational costs?
13
The best professors, categorically, are the ones that email their students a bootlegged copy of the too-expensive textbook or use alternative resources. I've found that these tend to be the most understanding, academically, and socially aware professors on campus. Its hard out there folks – every little bit helps
4
@Olivia The best professors, categorically, are the ones that email their students a bootlegged copy
So the best practice intellectual theft? Surely there are better solutions.
13
@Ryan m -- as a published author myself, I'm against intellectual theft. People who illegally download my books are, in effect, stealing from me. That said, though, when textbook publishers charge exorbitant prices for books -- which seems to have always been the case -- I can't say I entirely blame students who resort to illegal downloading.
2
The US has turned into the ripoff society. Its defenders say it is the free market, but as this article shows, there are all sorts of market barriers that result in massive wealth transfer - oligopolies among producers, decisions by intermediaries (professors for textbooks, doctors for pharmaceuticals) that affect the end-user, rent-seeking behavior.
No wonder we end up with a Plutocracy.
11
There is another dimension to this story, which is worth mentioning.
An introductory course that I teach from time to time has a very large enrollment, 200-300 students. There is an anthology that I want to use but I think is too costly for the students. So a few years ago, I negotiated a significant price reduction with the publisher. (I recently learned that some hospitals do this for pricey medicines, so why not for text books.)
I thought that this was the end of the problem, but during the course of the term, one of the students complained to me that the book was very expensive. It turned out that the while the publisher had indeed lowered the price, the bookstore charged the regular price, making an extra profit of its sales.
4
Mr. Wu is preaching to the choir here. At the community college and state university level, at least here in Florida, we have been mandated to look for less expensive textbooks and/or alternative sources for at least 15 years. Columbia must be that Ivory Tower we've all heard about, but I find it difficult to believe that professors from that institution would be so late to the dance.
1
My family didn't have a lot of money and my college was "paid for" with students loans that I'm still paying. So to save money, I borrowed books from our college library. If they didn't have a textbook, I tried my darndest to get it on interlibrary loan. If I couldn't get that, I purchased it used online at the lowest price possible. I estimate that I saved a ton of money doing it.
By the way, I had a professor for a class require that we buy two of her books. If my memory serves me correctly, the total was over $200. I borrowed them from the library, but that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. As a student, I felt that it was a conflict of interest for the professor to be requiring us to purchase her own books.
11
When I taught multiple copies of the books I used were available on reserve and able to be taken out from the school’s library. This information was on my syllabus, class site and I repeated it in class. I used examples of the high cost of textbooks in class and we discussed cheaper alternatives. Students would share their solutions to this problem .
2
I was an art and history major, so I was excused from the misery of purchasing countless STEM books in college.
What I can tell you is that the professors who didn't require textbooks always had the most engaging courses. There was no book to assign bland readings from. Everything was discussion-based and hand-picked by the professor.
I recognize not all have the luxury of time to create their own syllabi this way, and wish they did. Textbooks, by and large, are useless in the humanities.
2
We professors are a handy scapegoat on this issue, and perhaps some deserve it. But I think that in some cases, publisher contracts require that textbooks be "updated" on a regular schedule. That wasn't true in the case of a text I wrote. So used copies tend to be available. I suspect that some, maybe many, authors would rather not update a textbook if they didn't feel it was necessary. But their contracts might give them little wiggle room.
1
@john russial
There is no wiggle room. All introductory textbooks are on a 3-4 year revision cycle. Same with composition books. IT's to kill the used book market, plain and simple. I worked in college publishing before going into teaching (English). It's been this way for decades. And the high price of books covers lots of overhead--including the incredible number of sample copies sent out when a book is first published. Ask your mailroom.
2
That's why I run off copies of essential information I want the students to know and learn. I let the college pay for the copies instead of the students.
4
Yes, textbooks cost way more than they are worth, but despite the one outlandish example, the authors' of these books get about 10 percent of the purchase price. I have not assigned a textbook in my writing classes for many years. When I last used one, it was about $35. The basics haven't changed, but each year, the publishers pump out new handbooks. I do have students buy textbooks for literature classes, but do what is possible to keep the price down. There are some OER texts out there, they they require people to essentially donate their labor.
My two favorite tricks in regards to purchasing books during my college years (over a decade ago) were:
1. Having to buy numerous books for classes, only to then find out that we would only be reading a 10-15 page section from said books.
2. Trying to sell my well maintained and lightly-used books back for a quarter (if I was lucky) of the original purchasing price, which I had paid for just a few months prior during the beginning of the semester.
This hits home for me. The one time I bought a used book to save money, because it was true textbook not a book book, one that had the same cover, and it looked like the same text, (and as bought by a student at the institution) it turned out to be just one edition off. The issue? It was also missing one chapter. That is to say when assigned 1-4, in the new edition, the old one would have been 1-5. The result got a very low grade on the test. It was a struggle to pass it and I had to go to the reserves to read textbook stuff. This is indeed a scam.
1
I worked for several years as an adjunct professor who discouraged his (first year composition) students from purchasing the $100 textbook for the class. After all, writers learn the craft through their own work and not through the stupid exercises found in the book. I happily told my students that textbooks were a scam and if there was anything they could do to reduce the cost or get away with not buying a book, that they should do so.
Then came an admonition from the dean: do not discourage your students from buying the textbook EVEN IF YOU DON'T PLAN ON USING IT.
I have to think that the school, well-meaning in its mission but strapped for cash in our society of continual divestment in education, receives some benefit from Pearson (a company I have learned to loathe) for the volume of books sold.
Profit incentives in education, it seems to me, always lead to problems.
143
@jw I have to certify that my books are required for instruction each term, so I don't, and offer open source textbooks instead.
I <3 OpenSTAX.
9
@jw
I agree about Pearson.
7
@jw Pearson is the poster-critter for exploitive materials. Their books are pretty enough and a cell is a cell even in their books. They are expensive, mediocre and I think they came up with the online scam to kill the second hand market. Post-secondary education should be about advancing students' knowledge as opposed to adding to a crippling debt load. Good on you jw!
8
I absolutely agree, and I have not been requiring textbooks for a decade at least. It is not all that difficult to put together a set of readings for any of my courses. Those can include both classics, most of which are online and free, and recent articles which can be carefully curated to create a continuous thread of readings—and be free. I would urge all professors to do the same. One outrage is the 'revision' of a book so that students can't buy a used textbook, and those who used it can't sell it for much at all.
3
Let's not forget about the professors who assign their own textbooks for their classes. My college psyc professor "updated" his textbook each semester so not only could I not sell it back and recoup some of the $100 or so I'd spent, but students new to his class had to buy new. Oh, and this was an intro course with 100+ students.
3
A CUNY professor friend does everything possible to mitigate textbook prices by finding alternative sources for students... Or using less expensive books and supplementing information with classroom lectures
2
Cengage is not exactly the Sweetheart of the Publishing Industry in academia.
4
Having taught for many years, your article perplexes me. To whom is it addressed? You write "I long felt guilty teaching first-year criminal law out of a mediocre book that was both detested by my students and priced at $235". It sounds as though you assume others to have taken as "long" as you, or longer, to recognize the poverty of many students - not to mention the problem of ineffective teaching materials.
I - and I am hardly alone - have for many years done my best to make cheaper options available to my students, to produce photocopied course readers of selected material from the best sources where feasible, to use older editions, and to find used copies of textbooks on line and direct my students toward those cheaper resources. I also keep books on reserve at the library for students who cannot afford to purchase them, loan spare copies of my own textbooks as needed, encourage students to share (effectively), and teach undergraduates note-taking strategies that will allow them to prepare effectively without marking up books that they can later resell.
There are faculty all over the country thinking about these questions - especially those of us who serve economically disadvantaged populations.
Your article is useful in that it points out a number of helpful resources. It would read better were you to take a less condescending tone, and not presume that you have struck upon a novel idea.
52
@Dr. Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva I always find it very curious when folks like you take this defensive tone. It's great that you and your peers are thinking this way. Many don't. This article is very clear in addressing them.
6
@Dr. Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva Hear hear. I’ve been teaching political science at public universities for 20 years. During that time, I’ve met only a small handful of faculty who don’t pay attention to book prices. Law school faculty may well have a different ethos, and I’m aware that many math and science texts are quite expensive, but my general sense of undergraduate faculty is that most of us care deeply about keeping costs as low as we can.
3
@Dr. Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva Great response to an article that deserves your comment.
2
One difficult issue is that the textbook publishers incentivize the professors with all kinds of extras, like banks of test questions, powerpoint slides, and even lecture notes, saving a lot of prep time. I think that is a big part of the cost of producing the books and staying ahead of the competition. With the advent of the web (infinitely available illustrations of everything), any professor who has prepped a class more than once should have enough material to not require a book. I gave up assigning textbooks a few years ago but suggest that the students can buy an older edition (much cheaper) of one as a study aid if they want, and I provide detailed powerpoint slides on the class website that can serve as a textbook outline, to be filled in via wikipedia when they are studying for the exam.
3
My housekeeper's son is the first in his family to attend college, with support from scholarships. I offered to help by paying for the textbooks. I can assure you that he is not the only one getting an education. Thank you for exposing this massive, offensive fraud on all students, particularly those trying to "lift themselves up by their own bootstraps." Shame on the teachers and the school administrators that look the other way.
146
@Robert Craig
As long as we are exposing "massive, offensive fraud on all students" we need a NYTimes article on the fact that students are subsidizing semi-pro sports on campus at a rate of $300+ per student, per year, and for that, students get nothing. There are many price abuses on campus, and certainly some textbooks seem overpriced, but books are essential for learning, overpaid coaches and indoor practice facilities for outdoor games are more of a distraction from learning than an asset.
6
As I recent graduate, I saw both ends of this spectrum. Professors who worked really hard to make sure materials were accessible and affordable, and a $350 Spanish textbook.
I'd also like to mention that it should be against university policy to allow professors to assign a book they profit from. I understand, sometimes there is really only one choice, and it's your own. That's a drawback of cutting edge research. But an honorable professor I had who needed to use his own book bought it for us. My roommates and some friends were less fortunate.
4
Tim Wu presents an important point: professors shouldn't profit from the sale of their textbook to students. Well...yeah. Professors shouldn't capitalize on students, period. The classroom shouldn't be a site of personal profit generation. It's unfortunate that this needs to be framed as an opinion.
Giving up high-cost textbooks is a focal point in the ongoing conversation about "open educational resources" (OER) in higher education. OER and open educational practices task instructors with finding alternatives to high-cost materials by designing courses that embrace open (free and remix-able) materials and teaching practices. If we are talking about not ripping off students, OER and open education must be a part of the conversation.
OER help instructors move away from high cost materials, but they also provide new possibilities for teaching, learning, and collaboration. Re-designing a course around open materials is lot of work, yes, but it offers the opportunity to revisit how and why we teach, and urges instructors to develop increasingly inclusive, socially-conscious, and student-centered practices. Some universities provide funding to teaching with, curate, or create OER, often in collaboration with other instructors.
The OER Commons platform provides "hubs" for universities to share OER used and created by faculty. These hubs demonstrate the growing interest in OER and as spaces like these grow, it will be harder to justify the use of high-cost textbooks.
11
One barrier is that profs almost always order books through the campus bookstore. The software and vendors used are out of the control of most profs. I couldn't establish the cost of a book I was ordering through any simple means available. No price was displayed during the ordering process. I still have to go back and check to see that the students were not gouged. I will do that as soon as finals are finished and grades are submitted. It will probably take several emails and phone calls. A little like trying to price a hospital procedure.
4
Agreed, they are too expensive. But don't blame the profs! It's a textbook publisher racket. New editions always coming out, increasing the price. Access to online tools that very few students or faculty use also increases the price. My requests for spring 2020 classes were due TWO MONTHS ago. So I'm prepping while teaching this semester. That's always easy (not). I do what I can to lower the price for my Rust Belt students: copying chapters, assigning previous editions, putting texts on reserve in our library, and giving students the option of buying loose leaf editions or renting (which are not automatic options--they must be added by the faculty!).
1
There is a new publisher - FlatWorld who is offering quality, accurate, vetted, textbooks at an affordable/reasonable price. They've adjusted the product model and financial model to be able to do this. I believe this approach (maybe more so than OER and subscription w/hidden costs and rigidity) is one of the right way to go.
3
Wait, it wasn't a coincidence that my Con Law professor had us purchase for $225 the textbook he coauthored?
159
@Mo If a professor writes a textbook and doesn't assign it in a relevant class, there is something horribly wrong. The textbook will have both the material and the style that the prof thinks is appropriate. How could they not assign it?
Of course, a professor who is also the textbook author may just have a pdf of the entire book lying around somewhere ....
20
@Andrew you make two good points. At this point, I realize its best to rent used books for a quarter of the cost, or just fight with other students for the library's sole copy.
6
@Mo
A reasonable university policy would be to make any royalties earned where his/her own prof required his/her own materials for a course where they controlled the materials decision donated to some charitable cause. And some authors do this without any campus policy.
11
"Just like doctors who prescribe expensive medicine, we don’t feel the pain of buying a $211 book of uneven quality and no real use when the course is finished, or a digital access code that costs $100 and is designed at least in part to disable the used-book market."
I'd wager that to professor Wu this was a throwaway line, but as a physician, it struck me as a terrible analogy. I prescribe hundreds of different medications to thousand of different patients with myriad insurances(or none at all). I'm incredibly cost conscious, but the cost of medications and the amount the co-pays is virtually impossible to completely keep up on - I often have no sense of what to expect when I pick up my families medication. Medication cost and access is a huge problem, that deserves attention and should be(and is thankfully) a larger part of the healthcare debate; however, doctors are far from culpable to the degree a professor who teaches a few classes is when assigning a textbook. His larger point is reasonable; it would have been just as powerful without this analogy.
5
I'm a professor at a state university. Years ago, I stopped asking my students to buy expensive textbooks for my courses. Many of my students came from lower income families and were ecocomically challenged.
How did I help my students? I took my courses online and developed my own course content. It's time consuming and challenging to to do this but in the long run, it benefits students enormously by eliminating the cost of a very expensive textbook.
8
I have bookshelves full of textbooks from my children's years in college (2010 to 2017). How can I give them away for free?
2
For several years, I have been teaching a graduate class (Digital Preservation) at the City University of New York. I never used a textbook, for reasons of cost and limited teaching value. I created (and reviewed before each semester) a list of on-line documents and resources. The only cost requirement was for software, and even that had some inexpensive alternatives. As an adjunct who works a full-time at non-academic entities, I had to be conscious of my time commitments, but I couldn't really imagine forcing students to pay a lot of money for textbooks.
4
As a professor at a public university, I couldn't agree more. That said, the discussion currently underway regarding free and cheap textbooks tends to privilege the most popular subjects like psychology, which have many more free/open-source options. I worry that we will price some disciplines like art history or cultural studies out of existence with this model since they don't have quality free options, especially at the more advanced levels. Ironically, the case for free textbooks can create an even greater class imbalance when students simply choose to take more popular subjects because those books are free.
10
@John I am having this very problem right now - art history professor in New Jersey, where the state legislature is mandating professors use OER or lower cost textbooks. You're right - there are few low cost/free options in art history, but it's worse at the introductory levels. I've seen it affect student performance this semester, especially when students have to miss class. Without a textbook, they have to rely on borrowing another student's notes, which hasn't worked that well for some. Without a textbook, they don't have easy access to the images, either, which are the foundation of the discipline.
2
Oh, this reminds me of my days at Cal, a long, long time ago. My Geography class was studying development of cities from ancient times until the Industrial Revolution. Curiously, out of the six or seven books we were required to buy (long before the internet and used books were the vogue) was one covering the development of cities in the US with the advent of the transcontinental railroad. Curiously, that was after the Industrial Revolution, and material from it was not covered in lectures. Not so curiously, it was a book written by the professor himself. And that fine tenured professor had the gall to put a question on our final referential to his book. My worst grade in college. But I learned a lesson - not all cheery, garrulous old men are nice.
3
@Joe
And I am sure you still resent not being invited to his villa on the Riviera— you know, the one that was paid for by your textbook purchases and the exorbitant salary he was drawing from the University.
I had a professor who complained to us that his son was a freshman in college, and the books were really expensive. Then he asked us how much the book cost that we had to buy for his class. He didn't even know. And then he was shocked that it was over $100. A new edition also came out next semester, so none of us could re-sell it.
4
This is all so difficult. My university uses only materials that are available online and free to the student. This eliminates a lot of quality materials.
Publishers update textbooks frequently. It takes a lot of time to go through editions to figure out what has changed so that you can teach a course where students may have multiple editions, and then what to do about eliminated, copyrighted material?
Some courses work just fine with "course readers" made of primary and secondary sources collected by the professor. Others absolutely require a textbook. Imagine an anatomy class without one, for example, or, really, any course that introduces a student to a topic for which they will need an in-depth, systematic reference to the origins, vocabulary, history, and methodology of the field.
I honestly don't know why textbooks have become so expensive. There are a lot of students taking Bio 101 every year. Why can't they sell a $25 textbook that they revise every 5 years and make just as much as they would on the $250 one they revise every 18 months?
3
Strangely the author leaves out the most obvious problem - that the publishers routinely have very minor updates to textbooks with the sole intention that the old textbook can't be used again. With no market for used textbooks, the price of new textbooks can be as high as possible.
20
At University of Wisconsin-River Falls, the university purchases textbooks and rents them each semester to the students for a low fee. Faculty are required to use a textbook for at least two years before replacing it. Students who've transferred here from other colleges and universities have often expressed gratitude for the opportunity to cut expenses.
Faculty can also choose to use e-books if they prefer.
13
One of my professors tried to avoid assigning a textbook, feeling it was unnecessary. The school came back to him and said he had to assign a textbook. Apparently universities also have a hand in the profit making business.
4
Any professor who requires a textbook instead of assigning primary sources (supplemented if needed by his/her own material) is ripping off his/her students to begin with.
Any university that streamlines courses so that standardized textbooks, online quizzes, etc. are required, is treating faculty like mental Uber drivers and the students like robots.
2
"... instead of assigning primary sources ..."
Using primary sources in physics and chemistry would imply reading Newton and Lavoisier.
That's great for people studying the history or philosophy of science, but useless for people planning to go into scientific research, engineering, or medicine.
3
The author only points to part of the problem, at the end of the semester when students attempt to sell their books, they are offered only a fraction of their new cost even if they are in good condition. All too often they are told that the text has been "Updated" so this year's book is worthless. Many times that updating amounts to a paragraph here and there, no substantive changes, but it means the school bookstore doesn't have to buy back the books and everyone makes big money.
Textbooks are a racket that the universities are fully complicit in and they help perpetuate the abusive system.
4
I still have many of my textbooks (which felt absurdly expensive at $80-90) from college, 20+ years later. Paying that much helped me appreciate the value of education and take things more seriously. I'm not trying to imply the cost is justified, or that we couldn't do better, but I also don't thing most professors are doing this to "rip off" students. They have it pretty hard, too.
4
Sorry I don't have time to develop my larger point about this in more detail, but among the most shocking aspects of this is the assumption, apparently shared by just about all parties, that the resale value of textbook should be factored into its price, either favoring the student or publisher depending on how you look at it.
While I agree students should have the economic freedom and benefit of reselling their unwanted and unneeded books, just about everybody seems to be agreeing that the student's relationship with the textbook expires with the conclusion of the course. If the education and or/the book were really worth anything, the course would be just the beginning of the relationship (I'm setting aside the laughable notion that usally the textbook would be an extraneous, superfluous possession because the student presumably already knows its content, having gone through the course).
The unspoken assumption is that in most case the course is basically a hoop to be jumped through with the textbook a temporarily needed accessory, and the student is not expected to have a long term relationship, in most cases, with course content or the textbook.
Talk about consumerism run amok. Here's a hint: Professor, if you taught a course and the student wants to cash in the textbook, either a) your institution is helping to keep students poor, or b) your course is a fatuous credentialing exercise with no real connection to the student's ongoing intellectual life, or c) both.
10
@anon Is this post trying to make the case that people(should) spend a lifetime revisiting text books? That sounds exhilarating.
@Edward
Edward, while I appreciate your supporting my (apparently unusually idealistic) orientation, your sense that such an ongoing relationship would be somehow novel or unexpected confirms my point. Apparently you not only expect the relationship to course content to be very ephemeral, you treat that ephemeralness as the default, sometihng to be assumed except in unusual, exceptional cases, confirming:
"In most cases the course is basically a hoop to be jumped through with the textbook a temporarily needed accessory, and the student is not expected to have a long term relationship, in most cases, with course content or the textbook... [the] course is a fatuous credentialing exercise with no real connection to the student's ongoing intellectual life, or c) both.
Newsflash to any faculty reading this: such an anti-intellectual society (and professors who participate in aforementioned patterns, thus promoting anti-intellectualism) society deserve Trump, and bear substantial responsibility for his being president.
5
Yes. Or not have your time wasted in the first place. I only took the toughest, best teachers, and what they had to share is almost all core to 60 years later. They wrote for a hundred years or more past and for the far distant future.
1
This is a total canard. Textbooks are the Ferraris of the publishing world, with immense amounts of money poured into academic research, peer review, design and graphics, to create an often stunningly beautiful work for students to absorb...yes, learning is absorption, not merely retention. In addition, like the hand made luxury car, the small print runs mean more cost per book in printing—that’s just simple economics. An Oxford Shakespeare—or the latest neuroanatomy textbook—is not, in other words, not the same as a Dan Brown novel, with poor bindings, cheap materials and printed in the millions. For professors to eschew this wonderful aspect of the learning experience is to be negligent to the intangible beauty that comes with a formal education, and to deny students the option of opening a crisp new textbook—with all the symbolic hope and curiosity involved in that gesture—steals away a deluxe experience many are not likely to have again.
10
For the last ten years I have severed any relation between my courses at the University of Georgia and the campus book store. The text book system is indeed designed to compel students to pay outlandish prices for what is one of the most cherished, necessary and long-giving tools for a student--a book.
I have been directing students to used book sites and also allow them to purchase older editions of a text, if the newest "shell game" text is out as the "only one" available.
1
I wrote a Management textbook in 1993. It went through four editions and I earned about $100,000 from 1993-2015. My estimate is that over these 23 years my earnings (all taxable) came to $10/hour. The last edition was paperback, all black and white, and we put the references online to keep the printing costs down. The book still sold for about one hundred dollars.
During this time I would estimate that about half the students in my class bought used books on the secondary market. I often encouraged them to do this if they seemed to think the book was too expensive.
The publisher went out of business.
Are books too expensive? Damn if I know.
10
I always consider text cost when choosing materials for courses,
since1964.
2
I got upset when campus administrators banned the use of readers. This is when the professor uses a series of journal articles as course material and charges students the cost of printing. They generally came in large, messy, soft-bound books that fell apart half-way through the semester. But hey, they were certainly cheap.
If you went to a campus bookstore, everything cost more. That's why no one but freshman went to the campus bookstore.
Access codes are certainly a scam. However, I like to joke my last 3 credits every semester were earned for working the system. This includes school books but also gen eds, overrides, extensions, extra credits, housing, anything. Any angle you could possibly work, you worked. Managing college administration was part of graduating college.
As an example, tenure professors aren't typically required to require students to use access codes for course assignments. Naturally you should aim to enroll in a course section with a tenure professor. They don't care. You can buy the book used. No problem. However, you can also buy the access codes off the students who did buy the book new. You then turn around and sell them to students in sections that require the access code. Ta-dah. Income and savings.
College is one big hack. Learn fast or you will not survive.
1
So many universities have already been studying this rise of textbooks costs, not least of which is the 23-campus California State University system. The CA State Legislators requested a study across the UC, CSU, and community colleges (118 campuses) about use of open educational resources BACK IN 2013! We completed the study and implemented a majority of the recommendations across the CSU campuses. Take a look at our study here (and maybe, you know, cite/implement/acknowledge that work before allowing an ivy league faculty member to tell us all what we're already doing at the public institutions around the country, including CUNY): http://tinyurl.com/WPOERAdoption040116
2
I do consider the price of books for my students, I permit them to use other editions (if they are willing to take the risk of having a harder time tracking the assignments), and I put editions on reserve where I can. But in my experience, students are more likely to do the reading and to do it carefully if they have a physical text. Free material in an e-text is fine for simple material that the students can understand on a single read-through, or for short articles or excerpts the students might be willing to print-out. Not otherwise.
6
To argue that all new editions of text books are always minimal and unnecessary is blankly false. I have a text book in a 5th edition. In every case of a decision on a new edition which was asked for by my publisher there was careful negotiations regarding new content and the timing of moving on to new editions. I know I am not alone on this issue given the procedures of my publisher. Yes of course this is not always true by far with all publishers in all instances. Further in my experience it is university book stores who contribute to this problem by offering students very little money for text buy backs and then turning around and selling this used books at 50% mark up or even more. They do this while at the same time constantly criticizing publishers and authors of putting out new editions of their texts.
6
When my son was at CU Boulder, his math book (I think) was written by the professor and had a photo of a big red boot on the cover.
I thought, only at Boulder.
1
I generally found online resources that were free to use fit the bill. However, there were some technical textbooks required over the years. I always made sure copies were available in our library on reserve. Some students continued to complain while holding a $5 latte from Starbucks in their hand...when I asked them if they’d gone to the library to read the required chapter they’d say “no.”
Textbooks generally cost more because fewer are sold, etc. I think professors these days are very aware of book prices and plan their syllabi accordingly taking advantage of online material and public domain materials whenever possible. However, students need to do their part as well.
2
I am a retired university library director and have some experience with this challenging problem. Probably the biggest correctable wrong professors commit is assigning an expensive textbook when only one chapter or even just a part of a chapter will actually be covered in the course work. It is possible to put parts of books on 'reserve' for students to access in the library, or online, but there are copyright restrictions that must be observed. The most considerate professors put together their own course packets for sale in the bookstore, but this practice, also, usually raises copyright issues.
In the last ten years the most offensive tactic engaged by the publishers is putting critical materials online, only accessible with a unique, time-limited passcode. That means the textbook can't be resold, and the point, as stated, is to kill the used book market. There are reasons why using a used copy may not be advisable, but the biggest problem here is that, in the end, the student doesn't really own anything, because they are actually just paying for a license to access content for a limited time.
I still have a few textbooks from when I attended college over 50 years ago. The texts assigned for the current versions of those courses likely expire mere days or weeks after the end of exam period.
4
PJTramdack
Amen. Thank you. If it is not worth retreading over the break, it likely was not worth reading in the first place. During breaks I always reread the best books and the references at the end of the chapters that I valued. Then looked those up, xeroxed, punched holes, and bound them.
At a NIH summer seminar Professor Peter Armitage from Cambridge saw my bound copies, borrowed them, and xeroxed the collection for his own use. In exchange I got some supplemental tutoring over shared coffee.
I used to teach Government at a community college. I always encouraged my students to save money by buying a used prior year edition of the textbook. Generally, there were few substantive changes, and those could be communicated or updated in class.
The cost of college is absurdly high. Too top heavy with administrators and other non teachers. Cut those down, stop building projects and focus on education.
5
So many issues with this op-ed. 1) Law school texts are inherently more expensive than undergrad texts. That has been true forever. 2) Access codes almost always include full access to the etextbook in addition to online homework (that is fully required in many courses). 3) In stem, you can very often get two semesters of access to online homework, 4 years of etextbook access, and a clicker code for $100-150. That's two full classes and all the assessment associated with them for $50-75 per term. 4) Many instructors have already moved to OER (Openstax) despite the poor quality of those materials. That still often means that students will need to buy an access code for online homework (required). There are companies that sell that code for around $40/semester (zero cost book + $40 code).
The last thing I will say is that this op-ed reads as a law prof speaking to other tenured and tenure-track faculty. Most instructors who are focused on teaching actively seek deals and cheaper options for students.
2
I thought I had it bad the last time I was in school, ‘74-‘77. No way I could pay the cited book prices on top of the tuition and fees colleges now charge. Law school “case books” taught the law student the cost premium inherent in monopoly/oligopoly markets since one company, West, had over 70-80% of the market. The used case book market helped both buyers and sellers, but It seems looking back that West frequently came out with new and different editions making the used books worthless.
2
Pharmaceuticals are expensive, but at least they get used before they are out of date. Used textbooks in rapidly changing fields may have a historical purpose, but that is about it.
Those who are making millions off their textbook royalties ought to be taxed at an equally exorbitant percentage on those royalties.
I volunteer in the math lab at a community college, and a lot of these students are working a couple of jobs, have families, and literally every dollar matters.
1
Luckily, I have been lucky to avoid buying/renting expensive textbooks so far. Personally, I have found greater issue with the lack of transparency professors provide to the use of the textbook, rather than just the price. Professors wait until the first day of class to specify which textbooks they want, edition they will accept, and how necessary the book is. By then, of course, the price of the book has shot up. This will never make sense to me since most professors nowadays have access to student emails well before the first day of class.
Since I’ve mostly taken undergraduate social science courses, my experience is that my textbooks have been supplemental material, at best. The only way the textbook justifies the price is if you choose to avoid lectures altogether and show up for the tests.
I’ve also taken a few CS classes where the free textbook has been more than fine and almost all classes in the college use free textbooks.
It’s only a matter of time before textbook companies begin peddling textbooks and online programs with modules to university departments struggling to fill CS professor shortages.
1
While the overall point may be valuable, I find it a curious decision not to include the Open Access movement in this article. This would broaden the discussion immensely and connect the issue to other problems in academic publishing. Admittedly, there are not a lot of OA textbooks, but wouldn't this be a good chance to demand more? And to urge fellow academics to publish OA whenever possible?
5
@Mxb Thanks. OA has been a legal requirement for several years in Maryland for state supported institutions of HE. I can't say that the material is up to the quality of pre-OA material, but it is improving slowly.
This scam is peanuts compared to that currently being pulled by Elsevier: they publish the major journals that every scientist would love to have on their CV.
Most of the scientists/authors -- who are of course delighted when Nature or some other Elsevier journal accepts it -- have been funded grants given through public agencies. And then these journals rely upon publicly-funded scientist to do extensive peer-reviews with no payment.
Yet Elsevier charges immense fees for anybody who wants to read a single article (written by publicly funded scientists and reviewed by publicly-funded reviewers), or to purchase a subscription.
27
When I was an English major, I had a professor who made us buy a book of short stories he'd written and also a novel by a friend of his. Both books, I was fairly certain, were published by vanity presses ("Raw Dog Press" was the name of one... ew.)
The professor never even had us read his book. He said it'd be self-centered if he did. But apparently he had no problem making 75 students buy a copy for no reason.
4
I had a professor who tried to insist we buy the newest edition of Shakespeare's plays so we could all reference the same pages. It was a hard sell that left me thinking he got a kickback. I passed and used an older edition and had no issues.
3
Okay. The books can be expensive. But there are two problems to consider. First, the expense of the books. Second, the burden of students to pay for them. The solution has two sides as well. First. the expense of the books. Second, the lack of support for students to buy them. I don't know to solve the first problem, but I do know how to solve the second. Subsidize book purchases for students. And why not?
1
Some textbooks are better than others. The best ones tend to be expensive. A professor is under no obligation to find the cheapest textbook, and indeed I think that approach would be unethical because it would result in a lesser learning experience for students.
8
I worked in this industry for 5 years, it's dirty. Competition for the Intro to Psych class was intense. Professor ended up getting $3 per new book sold because we printed his syllabus inside the cover, known as a custom print, we just added $3 to the cost. Prof's take was over $4k.
It's not all on the publishers, the bookstores get to sell the same book approx 6 times (normal life cycle is 3 years between editions), and profit more on the used books vs new. It's a scam..
4
My department (English for Speakers of Other Languages) switched from a good but expensive textbook to one that is free but ... not as good. I'm OK with the change because we couldn't justify the cost to the students, but I find myself teaching around the new book, which isn't ideal either.
2
I think many people -- parents and students -- would be thrilled to know how frequently this issue is discussed among professors from many academic disciplines. And how ingenious so many of us are in finding affordable alternatives.
Take the so-called "intro" texts. If you've see any of them recently, you've probably noticed that the basic information to be covered is often buried under an avalanche of glossy photos, sidebars, and snazzy graphics that, while probably designed because publishers thought they would capture a reader's attention, are a confusing, costly mess.
While I can't speak for colleagues in the life and physical sciences, I can tell you that across the social sciences and humanities, it is relatively easy to create an even more intellectually challenging collection of readings and other materials that can be produced at minimal cost.
Many professors do this and one of the main reasons others don't is that they teach in departments that have chosen to adopt a text that all students and instructors are required to use.
A professor, armed with carefully selected supplementary materials, can -- if they really know their field -- BE the textbooks.
4
Any professor can place a desk copy of a textbook in the reserve section of the college library. Sure, students might have to stay in the library with the book to do the reading, but it's free. My daughter went all the way through a doctorate by reading reserve copies of textbooks in her university libraries.
4
I went back to college in 1987. For a class for Victorian literature, I had to buy a book written by the professor. It was about 80 pages, a hardback, and $35–a lot back then. We didn’t use it once. When I tried to sell it back, they told me that he wasn’t teaching the class the next semester ,so they wouldn’t buy it back. I still have the book—the poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins.
1
Our textbook for Physics I (8.01) and Physics 11 (8.02) at MIT is online and free to students. It took ten years to write.
The two textbooks, along with many different course materials, are available at OCW (Open CourseWare) where everything is free.
8
I helped a friend through college by purchasing textbooks. Often the books cost as much as tuition at the Community College. I was able to get most of the books online for, on average, half the price of the college bookstore.
It is a scam with many middlemen and no consideration for the low income families that struggle to get by.
A good professor will find an alternative to making an entire class buy the latest edition $300 textbook.
2
Mr Wu is partially right. Teachers ought to pay attention to the cost of books and observe conflict of interest ethical guidelines. Most do. Some don't.
However, the real issue is the lack of push back by college administrations to the publishers. There is none.
3
Why should students even be purchasing materials for classes? I do not recall my parents buying me textbooks from elementary school through high school. Why does this change once we go to college?
I think a simple fix would be for colleges and universities to be required to provide the learning materials as part of tuition. All of a sudden the incentive to find high quality cost effective alternatives is a priority of the university. This would be easy to mandate for state school (states could do it). For private schools, I am sure the Feds could mandate it in some fashion.
27
I've been teaching at University for 35+ years. I have always considered the price of the books and done everything I can to keep the prices low. Unfortunately, a 1000 Page book with hardcover and color graphics costs a lot. Look at any book at a bookstore. They are expensive. As for the online access to resources, those homework problems help my students, especially the weaker ones who will not come to office hours or go to tutoring to save their grades. The cost is worth it if the faculty integrate the text into the course in a meaningful way and the students use the resources we choose. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
2
The problem would be gone if books, including access codes, were be included in tuition.
If a professor wants to assign his own $300 book for his course? Fine. Go convince the department head to put it in the budget.
11
I am a retired college teacher (philosophy). On the first day of class I always asked students to share book buying experiences and thus helped them find the lowest prices. I always encouraged them to buy the previous edition as the changes are always minimal and wholly unnecessary.
4
Please forgive if I missed it in this article, but publishers regularly send new textbooks to faculty after identifying their course loads. I would received 3 or 4 books per course, none of them requested by me. But later in the semester, a gentleman would knock on my door asking if I had any text books to sell. I would show him 4 to 5 books sent to me without my request. He would check to see if those books were still being used and if so, he would pay me $40 to $50 a book.
It cost me nothing and I would make a couple of hundred dollars a semester.
I also examine each book I would require for a class. It would have to cover the material appropriately, give study questions, perhaps have an accompanying workbook (and as I taught a lot of music courses, it must have a usable CD or DVD for personal use). If students try to save money by buying these same books on line, they would not be able to purchase the CD's or DVD's, which is a major problem.
I also used the University Library, web sites, publications and older books and personalized handouts on my syllabus.
I am well aware of the outrageous cost of books, frequently raised in price only due to new publications with minor updates.
The expense of textbooks is only one of many reasons why education is so indefensibly expensive today, driving students into serious debt before employment is possible.
2
Every professional motivated by interests other than serving those standing (or sitting) in front of them should have to dress like a race car driver with all sources of income and other benefits proudly displayed.
2
I stopped assigning textbooks 20 years ago because they do cost too much and they do also go out of date almost as soon as they are published (in the natural sciences). With the internet, I believe that textbooks are no longer needed for college eduction. The emphasis in college education should be focused on the skills of how to ask the right questions, how to evaluate information, and how to fill gaps in the current knowledge.
4
Professors can and should charge what the traffic will bear, and students can and do find used alternatives or, better yet, on line texts, that will doo the job. Students who are able to pay full tuition, certs have no complaint that they have to pay for their books. And the ones that playing it close to vest, let them take courses with paperback texts.
1
heyomania
Watson and Crick came out with the double helix and then their book ~1965? Paperback $42 when a paperback book had gone up to 15 cents.
No hardback. Fell apart on me and every other student halfway thru the quarter. Had to buy a new one. Superb book .
Mid quarter I was in the UW Bookstore and the publishing salesman was next to me. Told him what a superb book it was. But it cost about 4 times as much as my hardback texts and did not make it they the quarter. Why no hardback?
He grinned. We market tested. We offered the hard back at the usual price ($10 I think). We offered the book in different markets as a $40 paperback.
Everyone was buying it thinking they were saving a fortune compared to what the hardback must cost.
And, as you said, buying a second.m copy.
Check it out now. Try to find a hardback textbook. If the books are not worth keeping for the rest of my life, then the course and books are not worth taking unless the books are in exploding fields where they are obsolete next year.
50 years later Cunningham’s Anatomy and Grants Anatomy and Methods if Anatomy and Kolmovorov’s Probability Theory, Lyusternik’s Convex Geometry and Sabine’s History of Political Philosophy are well worth reading, in hardback, again and again.
Others no longer.
Many a fine a professor had a mediocre, inexpensive textbook. I asked for and bought the expensive, classic, hardback and still at 77 reread.
Often, the university bookstores are to blame here. They inflate book prices to maximize profits. Universities have become money making machines at every level. Often you can find the same books much cheaper online and at a fraction of the cost if they are used.
Another trend I noticed is that many universities hire agencies to buy back books from students at the end of the semester at artificially low prices. Then turn around and sell these to next semester's students at original high prices. What do you call this if not predatory price gouging?
I agree that university professors have the responsibility of looking into this, but the students also need to be more vigilant instead of thinking "mommy and daddy will pay for it; what do I care?"
4
I am a university faculty member. Like ALL my colleagues I am intensely interested in how much the books I assign will cost my students. Like ALL my colleagues I only assign expensive books (I consider any book over $30 to be expensive) after a great deal of thought. Like ALL my colleagues I am very aware that by assigning an expensive book I am putting a burden on my students, and the higher the price goes, the larger the number of my students will be who either opt not to make the purchase, or literally are not able to do so.
I expect most university faculty members have probably put more thought into this topic, have had more direct experience with the issue, than has the author of this opinion piece.
University students are taken advantage of in many ways, but to focus on the price of required books is like swatting at flies. Like the overwhelming number of my colleagues the total cost of the books I require students to buy most semesters falls under $100, sometimes under $50. Books, unlike so many things university students are forced to pay for through their fees, are actually essential to education. The problem of affordable education has almost nothing to do with the cost of required books.
13
Well then you and your faculty members are rare, as throughout law school and college, using a combination of used books, library copies, and these stupid access codes, I had to spend on average $800. While you may be virtuous, my professors that made money by assigning us the overpriced books they wrote were not such.
Forget about the textbooks! As a professor I often consider telling students they're going to an overpriced school! Funny how they think the books are too expensive but happily trot off to one of the most expensive schools in the country.
15
"When prices were reasonable, that was a fine practice, but it is increasingly indefensible."
When were prices reasonable? The prices were as high when I was in college in the early '80s undergoing a STEM education.
Basic college algebra, calculus, physics, chemistry and the like haven't changed in 100+ years. I suspect professors, deans, chairs and the like are getting kickbacks from publishers.
2
@Cheryl totally agree w/ you.... the hard sciences never change. I was in the typesetting business and every three years we could expect a ‘new”revision of books we had previously type set. These were just like a shuffling of a deck of cards... although I helped my business it made no sense to the final customer, the student who was required to purchase it.
I am less familiar about the soft sciences but it would seem there could be reasons to revise them.
"Basic college algebra, calculus, physics, chemistry and the like haven't changed in 100+ years."
That depends on how "basic" you want to be.
Even introductory courses may discuss *applications*, such as cryptography, lasers, climate change, or nanotechnology.
And applications certainly need to be updated. Although, professors could develop their own examples of applications.
@Cheryl
Professors getting kick backs? Thanks for the good chuckle. I needed that.
When I look at a college textbook, what's going on on the pages is so busy that I can't concentrate. It's like television. ADD inducing.
Not to mention all the material that I wouldn't want to recommend to students but that the publisher includes, to expand adoption, I suppose.
The main rationale I can see for adopting these texts is to reduce faculty effort to the minimum. Which is good, so far as that goes. But hopefully it's not the student's whole experience.
2
Oh great, another "let's blame individuals instead of corporations" article. Publishers like Pearson (textbooks) and Elsevier (scholarly journals), etc., make huge profits and basically have monopolies. But yeah, it's the professors job to fix it (sarcasm).
Not saying that professors shouldn't try to find fixes in the meantime -- and in my experience working in a college library a lot of them do -- but the root problem isn't professors "spending other people's money." It's monopolistic companies overcharging like heck.
93
@LWib It's a lot easier for a professor to consider how strapped for money the students are than to change the way Pearson does business.
2
In my college days, unattended textbooks were stolen by other students in seconds. Everyone resold [no questions asked] at the end of semester book buy back. I don't know if students still snatch books...? I hope they solved that problem .. Books and bikes were always getting stolen.
2
Per a supreme court ruling, international editions of books are available on-line at very reduced cost (they are often loose leaf, not bound). Also the used book marketplace is very efficient active and can be checked using Amazon and Google. Even for a specialized curriculum, my kids spend $100-200 a semester at most for all their textbooks. Buying early in the semester is best, the cheapest copies go fast. You can rent on-line too. The campus bookstores charge retail and their rental costs are as high as purchase costs at online sites.
And not that I recommend this, but many on-line editions are pretty easy to share .
You do still have to buy the keys and other software, and colleges should pick one so you can use your $100 little key thing for more than one semester.
I spent $500 on one class for a masters program in the late 90s. i think costs are way lower now ..
2
Full disclosure: I have written several textbooks in the neurosciences. Every few years articles such as this come out and, as here, leave out an important economic factor that makes a big contribution to this problem--the used book market.
Making quality textbooks is indeed expensive, including peer reviewers, graphic artists, and several lines of editors, not to mention the printers and the people who make the paper. But a rule of thumb is that half the copies that will ever be sold of a book are sold the first year. After that, the used-book market swells and soon accounts for all sales. All those people who actually made the book get nothing from the used sales. Only the booksellers (Amazon is a big one, probably the biggest) get any profit from used sales, and they profit several times for each copy they sell (or rent). Often campus bookstores will offer only used copies because they make so much more money from them and, of course, students prefer the lower price. As more than half of textbook sales are used books, the problem can't be all the money the publishers and authors make, because they get zilch for used sales.
An interesting economic study would be to ask, of all the money spent by college students for textbooks, how much is for used copies and how much of that total is pure profit for booksellers?
Continued next comment....
14
@Marc Breedlove
I'm convinced publishers are raising prices in an attempt to recoup their money from that fraction of sales that actually generate any revenue for them.
Publishers are also eager to sell electronic versions of their books, because they come with an expiration date--3-6 months later the code dies and so cannot be sold to be used the next semester. But, students consistently report that they prefer hardcopies for studying. For one thing, if you're reading your text on a computer, Facebook, Instagram and every other distraction on earth is just a tab away.
One thing that makes the used text market work so well is that used copies of a book that was required at one college this semester are very efficiently distributed to whatever college requires it next semester. Think Amazon sales. We are never going to get that Genie back in the bottle.
As for revisions, I can't say what's changed in calculus over the past 50 years, but in the neurosciences, it is a big challenge to keep up with all the new findings and revisions to our understanding of the field. Each new edition of our books have hundreds of new citations and many major changes in every chapter. And if you go to the "open source" model, who is going to curate the additions and make sure they are actually accurate? Is a Wiki-textbook is going to be authoritative and reliable?
We need experts in the field to make sure the book is accurate, up to date. Should they do that for free?
15
@Marc Breedlove But by pricing them so high, the publishers help the used market. When a book is only a few dollars difference between new and used, I go new. So would most students. But when it gets up there, well what choice does anyone have?
I get that there are many changes in neuroscience but how many of those changes are such settled science that it is appropriate for a textbook. Changing it every 5 years, with supplements seems more reasonable.
I teach computer science, and always look for a cheap textbook option. Many of the trade books out there do the job, and cost say $40 instead of $200. However, I have not had much luck at finding free open source books in the areas in which I teach. There is obviously a lot of non-textbook material out there for free, but the problem with those sources is that
a) they are usually not aimed at students and assume knowledge and sophistication that my students do not have
b) coverage is spotty and has to be pieced together
c) a lot of the technical material out there is just simply WRONG or badly out of date.
And that leads to the central problem: We are all supposed to be using free, open source textbooks. Who is going to write all these high quality books for free? No one seems to have an answer for that.
14
I am a professor at a state school and this is a very old issue for us. Myself and many of my colleagues have cared about this issue for more than 15 years. Many of us try and recommend books that are cheaper, but in some cases, a cheaper textbook can be poorly written, badly illustrated or inadequate in its coverage of the subject. In these cases, I have tried to run my own "lending library" using multiple copies of the book purchased with my own money to help students out. I have urged students taking a previous iteration of the course to consider lending or selling them to the next generation of students.
It is unfair to say that we do not care: we actually do care, a lot and work hard to help save money for our students.
24
I had one instructor who made us use her “book” which in reality was little more than a pamphlet that was filled with typos and errors. We were charged the same as we would have been for a full published textbook. I complained and was told it was within the rules and there was nothing they could do about it. However, I don’t think they hired her to teach the class in the following semester. That didn’t help me or any of my classmates. We got ripped off.
2
In the past, as an instructor of writing and research, I avoided expensive textbooks. The Strunk & White paperback stylebook -- new or used -- provided guidance to the students. I had worked my way through college and university -- and paid for my textbooks with after-tax earnings. I knew the burden of textbooks.
At UCLA, for a post-graduate course I took ( as a doctoral candidate ), the adjunct professor took the email address of everyone in the seminars. He then emailed a list of URLs for us to read for every meeting. This accelerated the discussion of topics.
After that, as an adjunct instructor at a community college, I attempted the same routine of on-line references as class readings. The excellent students excelled, the slackers did not prepare. Whatever, I reduced the expense to all the students, A through F.
Then, at a faculty meeting, I suggested we exploit on-line resources whenever possible to eliminate the expenses to students. Silence. No response. The director changed the subject.
After that meeting, one of the I T techs enlightened me. "Do you think we're going to cut into the sales of the bookstore?"
My contract with that college ran semester-to-semester. I never received another class.
I tried to help students. The faculty blacklisted me.
No problem. As a past best-selling author of novels and import entrepreneur, I do not need paychecks. I am independent.
Truth is, too often faculty assign textbooks as vanity sales -- or sloth.
3
My degrees (science) are many decades old. Textbooks at that time were costly but not as outrageous as told in this article. However the suggestion made by many commenters that classes rely on lecture notes rather than books would not have worked for me. Unfortunately several of my professors had a limited or heavily accented command of English. This made understanding what he (all men) was trying to communicate impossible. Without a textbook to consult (older editions were fine most of the time), there would have been huge gaps in my education.
Why these teachers were hired at all is something that I didn't question at the time but has angered me ever since.
3
Thank you. I am in the process of selecting textbooks for an Organizations course. This was a timely and useful article.
3
I teach writing, and my textbook of choice comes in around $50 new, $40 used, maybe $30 e-book and $20-ish rental. In addition, I have a copy of the text available on reserve at the university library every semester. However, I also point out to students not to begrudge authors in general since people who write for a living ought to get paid for their hard work. I ask the students if they'd be willing to give away products they create (including their own labor) when they begin working. Of course not!
4
@Chris but when the difference between editions is only a couple of sentences, what are you really paying the authors for?
This is a great Op-Ed. Thank you for writing about this issue. Some universities actually offer professors course development grants to redesign their courses with resources that are free for students to access. This way professors are compensated for the time and energy they spend in finding good, solid substitutes to a pre-packaged, expensive textbook.
5
Some of the best college classes I took did not require a textbook.
Instead, the professors put together a readings list of articles and videos to watch and provided their own lectures and materials.
Of course, that takes a professor a great deal more time than just requiring a textbook.
But who wants to use the word lazy?
5
My experience is in the sciences and engineering, so this is perhaps a different perspective from the one in law. But in my field, yes textbooks are expensive. But here's the thing: professors are already stretched too thin. Individual professors have little time and less negotiating power.
Teaching professors and adjuncts are often juggling half a dozen courses at as many schools, without benefits and barely making ends meet.
And for many research professors, teaching undergraduates is not even their actual job; it's just an institutional requirement. It's not why they were hired, it's not what keeps the lights on in their lab, and it's not what gets them tenure. Probably they never even received any training in it. Their primary responsibilities are directing research, supervising and mentoring graduate students and postdocs, writing papers, reviewing papers (for free!), writing grants to keep the lights on (from which the university skims a massive amount of money off the top), and sitting on admin committees. They have a thousand other things they're supposed to be doing, but you want them to spend their limited teaching time not even actually TEACHING the students, but on price-checking course materials? It's ridiculous.
Why go after professors and not publishers? Or universities that won't hire staff to manage course materials and negotiate prices? Certainly they have more negotiating power than a single adjunct? While pile it all on individual professors?
7
In college I would buy previous editions off half.com and saved a ton of money. The information was the same.
2
The problem is unregulated tech not textbooks. Aside from a handful of textbook authors, professors struggle with this too and can only respond by not assigning new editions every 2 years. Looking ahead, as the tech powerhouses put more publishing houses (and classroom teaching itself) out of commission, we will need to regulate the tech-education industry. Given our legislators’ failure to regulate any aspect of big tech, I am not hopeful. American higher education itself – especially public higher education – is at risk. Tim Wu must continue to call our legislators and big tech to account.
1
I am an 81 year old participating in a Lifelong Learning program at a local college. The program includes auditing access to courses in the catalog if they are not full. I signed up for an Italian course for the second time in order to review its content, but found myself being conflicted when I saw the price of the course's new text and workbook. It amounted to about $225.00 for the seventh edition of the course materials. I still had my old text and workbook but they had been replaced by a new edition. How much does the Italian language change to require the writing of a new edition. In addition to charging an obscene price in the first place, the text becomes impossible to sell after completing the course because it has been replaced for the sole purpose of adding to the publisher's income, with maybe a kickback to the educational institution. Isn't something wrong here that should be corrected?
27
And when the professors use their own textbooks in their classes, they are doubly ripping off students by making a percentage of each sale from the students.
15
@Panthiest please do not generalize. Some of us give to our students the content of our own books for free.
4
@Panthiest so you believe if a professor is one of the top professors in his field and authors a highly informative and reviewed text (including reviews from his or her many students) he or she should not use the textbook in their class under any circumstances?
3
good for you, all you professors who consider the price of the textbooks you assign and class. why isn't there a group of 100 of you who care enough to create a really world class textbook that is the best of the best? Surely 100 people together can design something superior or at least equivalent to the top-notch experts, being experts themselves in their field. 100 cooperating brains will inevitably be better than one magnified self-perpetuated self fulfilling self serving leader. amirite? do you really believe that year after year after year you are producing the finest quality product that merits such a premium over all others? or is it the inertia of this captive market that is completely not a free one?
3
One issue is also the college bookstores. Follett owns many of them, and they want to make their money. They even do "rental textbooks" which seem to cost about half of the cover price - and when you have a $375 economics textbook, 1/2 of that can be too prohibitive for many students. There should be no reason why instructors adopt expensive books when there is so much out there for free, or available through the library's resources. Open Stax is a great brand - the books are generally under $50.
3
As a college professor, I try my best to give students course materials for free or to help them find the cheapest alternative. Here's the catch, though: let's say you are fine with your students using an older edition of the textbook. Problem 1: publishers come out with a "new" edition every couple of years, basically changing the page order and altering chapters just enough to make it confusing if you want to use an older edition. And problem 2) the university bookstore will not order anything but the newest edition (I assume the publishers refuses to sell them older ones). I agree that the price of textbooks is ridiculously inflated, but believe me, it is NOT the professors' fault. We gain nothing out of this!
11
I couldn't agree more. I just finished teaching a law and policy course, and I assembled all my materials by hand rather than relying on a low quality textbook.
Also this argument should be extended further. It boggles my mind how much money primary through high schools spend on frequently replacing perfectly good textbooks. These textbooks are also insanely expensive and teach basic topics that don't evolve. Case in point, my NYC public high school seemed to replace math textbooks every few years. But high school math hasn't changed in centuries! In contrast, i went to an old school Catholic primary school. We used textbooks until they were falling apart and my education did not suffer at all. If anything it taught me that books are precious and not disposable pieces of fashion.
3
I am not in academia, but I just wrote, illustrated, programmed, and published an electronic math book with interactive illustrations ("Hilbert Curves") for the iPad, for only a couple of bucks (less than two lattes!).
But not being in academia, I need to be compensated by sales, as I have no institution to pay me to otherwise contribute to the world intellectually.
Everyone wanting everything for free is an inverse form of price-gouging (didn't it used to be called "dumping"). There has to be a middle ground.
The price of a used computer tablet is less than two of the high-priced paper textbooks described in this article. Perhaps all educational books required for students should be electronic and low-priced.
5
Unfortunately, this has being go on for decades. I can remember being obliged to purchase a book for my criminal law course that was for the most part useless. However, the author, who was a judge any my professor, insisted that we must have the book. This was back in the early 60's and the price of the book was $100. What would it cost today?
1
@Norm
$846.08
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
I work in a college library where we are trying to encourage professors to use open and affordable sources when possible. One point I want to add to this is that you might think the expensive book is the best one, and maybe it is, but some students will definitely not purchase it. Or they'll get an outdated edition, or they'll share it with each other and not be able to access it when another classmate has it. What does it matter if it's the best book in the field if it's so expensive that students are just not going to read it?
3
I just finished my Masters at a major private university. Many of the professors were unaware of the costs of the textbooks they required. In more than one instance, only a small portion of the text was required reading. The material could easily have been covered in a less expensive book covering the same subject. The material was very stable from year to year. Spending $275 on a book that I would rarely use again was not a worthy purchase.
3
To add insult to injury, many classes require multiple books, while still others list required books and then barely use them in the class.
I am appreciative of the many professors that I have had, however, who either go without a textbook, or distribute their own textbooks free as digital copies. Add this to the movement towards free software like R for statistics instead of expensive packages like SAS and Stata, as well as python for math/physics instead of the pricy Matlab, and it's easy to see why publishers are getting nervous.
1
The risk you run with using free or cheaper sources for technical learning while in college is that the company with which you are interviewing wants it’s hires to have SAS experience. Without that you’re sunk and will not get hired.
@Amy The 'recommended' books are the hardest- you can't tell whether that means "I'm going to assume you all bought this" or "I will never mention this again" until you get to the class and are either stuck with an expensive book you don't need or have to scramble to find it
I am not sure this article has much relevance way back in the 80s we would go to the school bookstore and buy books which we would resell of the end for cheap beer money. It was a few thousand every year
2
@Casey The University I went to charged exorbitant prices for textbooks and when they did book buy backs you got pennies on the dollar, if they’d buy them back at all.
The only good thing I can say about it was that there were places you could donate your used books and they got sent to schools in underdeveloped countries.
2
I agree with the author's main point that professors should be conscientious of what books (and their costs) that they assign but I disagree with the idea that textbook authors should lower their prices. If they've written the best textbook then they should price it is they see fit. Otherwise the most talented professors and communicators will not put forward the effort to produce the best textbook and we as a society will suffer. The Gregory Mankiw textbook alluded to in this article (42 million in royalties) is the one I used in my college econ class and it was one of the best texts I've ever read (even though I disagree with his brand of economics). I read every chapter at lest twice and it was far more instructive than our lectures. In med school my textbooks were the foundation of my basic science learning. Textbooks are developed often by the best in academia and over the course of many years with many revisions. There's no substitute for good old fashioned reading. Lecture slides and powerpoints just can't relay the same information. Textbooks are a worthy investment
5
@TS
Publishers set the price, not the academic authors. It's all about price gouging, plain and simple. Even in the humanities, a monograph can cost a library $150. The author gets barely anything. The payment for publishing a book that is not a textbook is prestige.
2
The Cengage "Unlimited" model Mr. Wu mentions works well in some cases, but also has some serious drawbacks. First of all, it only provides textbooks online (at the base price). A lot of students still very much prefer hard copy texts. Second, the "Unlimited" model only works for students if a large number of faculty on a campus have adopted it. If a student only has one class that is using the plan, it becomes very expensive for them.
Contrary to what Mr. Wu states, a lot of faculty in our state community college system work to keep the cost of books for our courses as low as possible.
3
This is true, but give us some credit. I STRONGLY consider textbook prices for my courses. And, I teach at a private university where these prices are a small drop compared to a large tuition bucket. However, I acknowledge some students are left paying for books themselves without financial assistance.
So, good column and issue overall. But many faculty are aware and are proactively addressing this situation.
2
I couldn't agree more. As a community college professor, I've forced my students for years to buy my online textbook at a cost of $60--not wildly expensive, mind you, but still out of reach for some. No more. The thing is, with public domain materials and Learning Management Systems like Canvas (which students get for free), I can now provide my students with high-quality resources, free of charge. But I'll sure miss those fat royalty checks of $250/yr, LOL.
3
Just here to share an idea for students who might read this thread: I got smart on my master's degree and engaged my public library's inter-library loan program (they partner with other public libraries to provide books they don't house. For instance, mine has a partnership with U of Illinois and UIC and can borrow a book from their library for free!) It saved me around $3K in total, even with a few late fees here and there.
2
@Laura s Might work for some, but my library doesn't ILL textbooks. A good idea though.
1
@Laura s I did it a couple of times but you couldn’t keep them for the whole class and you could only renew them once.
This editorial represents the tip of the iceberg.
Universities must be held to the highest standards of transparency as to how each and every cent of student tuition and fees are utilized. And they should be required to post these financial findings at the very front of their websites, just under the glossy photo of happy students on campus.
3
It might not always be the professor's fault. When I was teaching a college writing class, I wanted the students to have Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style," which I had only ever seen as a paperback. At that time, it sold for $7.95. I gave the title to the campus bookstore; they found a hardcover version for about $80. Luckily I discovered that before the first class and advised the students to go to a local bookstore and buy the paperback.
9
@Rick M - Hmmm....the hardcover is on Amazon for $12.31. I wonder what's going on at that bookstore?
1
The textbook, in my experience, was actually the best teacher and provider of education when I went to college and law school. You should pay the prices you state in your editorial. $250 is not a lot for a very thick book with enough information to teach you throughout the semester. I don't understand why, in many classes, a video of a really good professor could not be substituted for some of the lousy and very average professors I sometimes had. Kaplan bar review classes used this concept and it was an exceptional experience because both the textbooks and the professors were tops in knowledge in the field and ability to teach that knowledge to students.
2
That's right. Blame the underpaid full time and adjunct teaching profession for the unconscionable cost of textbooks. If this writer to the time to speak to any of us, he would know that we wish there were more books to put on reserve in the library, greater ability to put books, articles and the like on line, ways to make reading materials more accessible. Very few of us have become millionaires from writing textbooks; if one's textbook is popular, that person can have a good middle class lifestyle. Fight the oppressive cost of textbooks; why not fight for legislation that puts a cap on required textbooks; or better yet, put texts on line! Stop blaming professors.
27
Professor here...yes, I do consider this and in fact chose an open source text for my introductory course but why blame the professors and not the textbook publishers? The professors aren't making the big bucks from these books...even if a few who wrote them might, overall, it is the textbook publishers who are to blame.
22
Guilty as charged. As one of the many adjunct profs who are paid a pittance to teach, selection from a range of mediocre texts is simply not as big a priority for my time as the many other facets of course preparation, management, delivery and evaluation. Additionally, while texts in the 3-figure range sound expensive, I often marvel at the ability of young folks in the age cohort of my students to dine at the same mid-range establishments my wife and I enjoy - some of them apparently dropping the cost of a text on food and drink on a weekly, or daily, basis. Not to say that there are not some taking my course for whom affording tuition and texts is not burdensome. But this speaks more to growing dysfunction and inequality in the American education system
11
Chris, it's not the professors who are getting the money from skyrocketing tuition. Look on any college campus at the explosion of new dean positions. And it's certainly not the textbook authors who are raking in the cash from the ridiculous inflation we see in textbooks. (I recall shopping for textbooks as a freshman in 1976 and overhearing a woman aghast at the exorbitant new $20 physics text). Academia has been declared a superb arena for capitalist expansion. There's more middle men on campus than in the insurance industry. Money is changing hands, gotta shake some loose and sweep it up. God forbid some lower economic class student should get an education and actually get ahead in life. Class mobility is a fantasy -- but enough citizens are buying that itinerant rock-star college administrators, seeking to grow endowments and compete in the country club level arms race at our colleges can shake $55k-$80k a year from every wide-eyed, hopeful undergrad.
10
I'm surprised the students aren't just scanning the books and passing around a PDF.
3
Nice job, Professor Wu. For my kid's college books, I'm sad to say the most helpful option so far has been rentals through an Amazon Prime account. That opens up a host of other societal issues I had been trying to avoid.
1
I have been a college professor for more than 15 years now. I have done several things to reduce costs for my students. I ALWAYS put a copy of my textbook on reserve and almost always use older editions of textbooks. In upper level classes, I often assign academic articles that are pdf's and put them online for my students. There are ways to keep costs down but in general I have found academics - particularly those of the older generation - to be out of the loop on the costs of college outside of tuition. I remember years ago talking about this issue with a senior college and he looked at me in amazement and asked "what are you worried about - most students get loans to cover the costs of their textbooks." That's the american system - higher education is more about making money for big publishers and the student loan industry. The only solution publishers offer me is to assign online texts that students can rent. Across the board, my students prefer hard copies - particularly when it comes to online rentals that disappear after the semester. We need to stop trying to make money off of everything - including our students!
3
Furthermore, some colleges require and hassle the teachers to order textbooks to be sold in the college bookstores--even if the teachers have other plans. When the required texts cost, say, $250 per student and there are a minimum of 25 students in a class, we are looking at big money for the booksellers, especially when most colleges offer hundreds or thousands of classes per semester, with three or four semesters per school year. Big money.
3
Thank you, Mr. Wu for alerting us to the fact that Mankiw has made an estimated $42 million in royalties from his rather unimpressive $250 tome. Horrifying.
There is no free lunch, and such riches flowing to Mankiw literally come at the expense of students being able to enjoy lunch (hence, the rise of food banks for hungry perhaps even starving students at many schools).
5
This isn't new, it's just getting increasingly more oppressive. I just had my 30th college reunion, but I remember, well, being back in school in the late 80s and the struggle to purchase textbooks. You were lucky if you could find used books because the edition would change so often. Then, to add insult to injury, we had a company that would buy the books back from you at the end of the semester to then sell as used. They'd offer you like $5 for a book you'd spent $80 on, just three months earlier, then they'd turn around and re-sell it for $45. And that was only if the edition for the next semester wasn't changing. If it did, they wouldn't buy it. We called them the Book Weasel. It was robbery, but usually, you were so desperate for funds at the end of the semester you'd take it.
And people wonder why kids get into so much debt in college. Things are stacked against them from the start.
5
My son is in college, so I am sympathetic to ridiculous textbook prices. However, I am married to a Professor and have to say I have seen her and her over-worked colleagues go above and beyond to do everything they can to make texts cheaper for their students, so even the title of this opinion piece is a little insulting to all the professors who have done everything they can in their spare time to place books on reserve at the library, etc. to help their students.
124
@Brian
Exactly Brian. I'm a professor and I'm happy to see that Professor Wu has found a way to reduce course costs as most of us have been doing for years.
32
@Brian It also ignores the fact that it is quite rare for a professor to make any money whatsoever in royalties - let alone the $40 million exception that they cite. The public already has enough distrust of academia. No need to fan the flames with absurd outlier cases. The problem is the publishing industry itself, not those who research and write, and who for the most part receive no direct profit from their work, i.e., the vast majority of university professors.
82
My intro stats textbook at Columbia cost over 200 dollars. It was the latest edition, so we could not buy second hand. Earlier editions had slightly different numbers on what turned out to be the same problems. There were frequent typos. I felt completely used.
2
My experience actually runs counter to this. I have spent about 6 years in classes in higher education. I earned a BS in physics from UCLA, and a MS and PhD in physics from Stanford. UCLA facilitated cheaper books through official used books and buyback programs. Professors worked to find cheaper alternatives when they could. In physics, there are some texts that dominate through quality and value, such as Griffiths or Jackson for Electricity & Magnetism. I specifically remember professors commiserating over prices and a few even made sure the library had a few copies that couldn’t be checked out so students couldn’t hoard them. Some recommended websites that were cheaper, or had rental options. They were upfront about texts that would be references rather than daily reading. At Stanford, a professor even went so far as to teach strictly from a PDF that Stanford professors had developed and never published as a book. He had the bookstore print it in a bound format for less than $50. It was universally my experience that professors cared and tried, mostly because they had gone through the same experience.
274
@Joel F My experience is similar. I had a little over 500 credits spanning three undergrad degrees two graduate degrees and some time in law school, across 10 different schools, and never once have I purchased a digital access code. I HAVE however used: previous editions of books that had tiny textual changes, copies handed out by professors, and journal articles instead of books.
Sure, I believe the digital access code issue is a real thing, and the textbook racket is a real racket, but it's pretty easy to get around in my experience, and I question how widespread it is, and how much of this is happening at for-profit schools.
17
@Joel F
Also at Stanford, the late Anthony Siegman published the definitive text on lasers, a first and second edition. He purposely chose a small publisher for the second who would sell the book, while not cheap, for much less that the big academic publishers would have.
28
@Joel F
I was glad to see this was your experience- Nice!
When I was in college I was able to buy textbooks with grant money. My experience were of fellow students borrowing my books to use and photocopy because they could not afford the books. A pox on every professor who assigned a book that was never used.
And $100.00 for access codes? How can that even be justified?
22
Granted, we can all agree that neither professors nor publishers should exploit students. But there are reasons other than exploitation why textbooks cost a lot. A typical intro textbook nowadays goes through a multi-year review process involving dozens of professors to ensure its coverage, approach, and accuracy are appropriate. It is no longer considered sufficient just to have words on the page; rather, each oversized page is now expected to have two or often four-color artwork, diagrams, call-outs, feature boxes, and other pedagogical features. The feature density requires that each page--in books that are quite commonly 500-1000 pages long--be individually designed, and the proliferation of color elements requires expensive, high-opacity paper. And the book itself is just the starting point. Major intro texts commonly include supporting ancillaries for the professors and teaching assistants: test banks, lesson plans, slideshows, and handouts, for instance. Expectations are growing that students will also be able to access a textbook online, not just as a pdf, but as a fully responsive digital experience enabling a growing range of additional features: homework assignments, study support, chat groups, review tests. The entire course apparatus, from attendance to grade delivery, may in fact be part of the package.
When we talk about textbook prices today, we're often talking about much more than just a book.
8
@pak The uses of the ancillary material depends on the field. Much of it is added as a means of justifying the absurdly high prices and to market the book in comparison with competing texts or recent past editions. This is a scam. In certain fields, for example genetics, there is reason for updated texts or for texts to be replaced by online materials. There is little justification in the Humanities or Social Sciences. Not to diminish History or
Anthropology and other fields, but the differences between editions and between competing texts are at best minor. Yet new History texts in intro courses can cost as must as $125 or more. Text reps travel from faculty office to faculty office trying to "sell" their product. There is in fact a justification for the high cost of textbooks. but aside from specific fields, there is just about no good reason to replace previous editions or introduce new competing texts as often as now done. If the production costs of texts were scaled down, - ancillaries, use of extensive color. expensive printing and paper costs, - it would save a great deal of money. Also there is little reason for highly paid "star" authors - the "big names" in academia. This is an industry that needs and is already getting "disruption." All to the better.
4
@SB You are absolutey right about "new" annual or bi-annual editions. In English, I have found that often what happens is the editor-authors simply re-arrange the materials into different chapter headings. The whole purpose is to avoid the buy back and make money.
The outrageous cost of text books is all part of the experience of getting robbed blind by college and universities. It should be made illegal.
2
Nonsense. Since the students are investing so much time in the subject professors need to provide the best books in the field.
11
It's also important to point out that many students buy these books with money from loans. Which means your $200 text book will cost much more than $200.
4
@Megan
In my observation many students buy optional lifestyle goods and services like nice furnishings, restaurant meals, travel, electronics, clothing and other discretionary amenities with loans, too.
Back when I was in school we crammed multiple people to a bedroom, wore thrift-store clothing, sat on hand-me-down, thrift furniture (or the floor), ate a can of soup for dinner not $35 of Buffalo Wild Wings and otherwise lived spartanly.
Students today (and I work in my Big 10 alma mater's town) expect the lifestyle of middle-aged, middle-class workers before they've ever even earned their BA. That, much more than "tuition hikes" and textbook costs, is responsible for their debt.
8
@Earthling Just because you see lots of wealthy college kids on Netflix doesn't mean that it is everyone's reality. Wander through any university campus, and you'll discover a diversity of stories and experiences - and many students living in substandard housing, working multiple part time jobs, and struggling to balance poverty with a full course load.
10
@Joe
I see lots of college students every day who are using loans to drive new SUVs ( in a town with magnificent public transport), to support chains like Chipotle, Buffalo Wings, Potbelly, etc etc right on campus, who support lots of clothing and gear boutiques, etc. -- when I was in school these exact same buildings housed used book stores, used record stores, used clothing stores and one diner. The size of the student body is the same but in my observation the lifestyle choices of the students have expanded, as has their spending.
My big treat once a month was a thick roast beef sandwich from a deli a half-mile walk away. This was in the 1980s. Now these pricey restaurants are packed each and every day of the week.
I've no interest in student loan whiners, unless they are willing to provide their checkbooks, credit card statements, car loan & insurance statements etc. for the entire four (or however many years they were in school, and subject their discretionary spending to some scrutiny. Why should we forgive loans that were spent on dining out, travel, booze, clothing, new-car payments and other optional expenses?
4
At our campus this is an ongoing and important discussion. I teach intro science classes and have been doing a significant amount of research into free texts/Open Education Resources (OER). We have many faculty who have switched over the past few years.
For OER texts in my subject area, the writing quality is good, but the supplemental images/animations are simply not equivalent to professionally produced texts. What I have done for my students is:
1. Have multiple copies of the text on reserve in the library.
2. Not require the most recent edition (any of the last 3 editions is fine).
3. Encourage them to buy used, or rent the book.
4. Not require them to purchase online access.
5. Write my own lab manual, and hand out copies free.
6. Post extensive notes and Powerpoints and study guides on line (access is free, and we don't charge students to print them out).
One student this semester told me they rented the book for $25 (a new text/lab manual package from the same publisher would easily cost $300+).
So, I'd suggest that there's plenty of us who do NOT fall into the "lazy/greedy author/professor" category that this article seems to focus on...
Anyone interested in this topic should search for "Open Education Resources" (OER).
50
@Community College Prof -- I'm another community college professor. Everything you mention doing for your students is becoming much more common on our campus, with some faculty putting in hundreds of hours to develop/adapt OER textbooks, other learning materials, and assignments that cost our students nothing or very little.
OER doesn't work for all courses, but there are plenty where it can and does. Until the oligopoly of the textbook publishers is broken, using OER materials is the best way to save students money.
6
The blame should be placed on publishers who routinely mislead professors regarding the cost of textbooks, release new editions when it is not necessary and markup textbooks prices exorbitantly. The result is a limited used market for older editions and no used market for new editions. Professor often try to reduce textbooks costs for their students, but, professors are not informed of the actual textbook costs until it's too late. These costs are often way higher than they were originally promised by publisher representatives, who travel the US tryng to entice professors into requiring their books. When international editions of the same books are available online for far cheaper than U.S., we are told it is illegal buy those books in the U.S.
10
I certainly agree that professors should be attentive to the price of textbooks. But Mr. Wu should keep the focus on textbook publishers and authors. Textbook publishers, in my opinion, often overcharge for these books. Worse, when they publish a new edition of a textbook, previous editions become virtually worthless. I don't know how much money textbook authors earn, but I think that authoring a successful textbook is one way to make some reall $$$ as a professor.
3
@Chris Rasmussen -- Bringing out new editions of a textbook every two or three years (especially in your field) is one of the biggest rackets a publisher can do. It's only purpose is for the company to make more money.
1
It's the textbook publishers who are ripping off students. Besides the high prices, they make minor organizational changes to "create" new editions to dissuade students from buying used versions of the books at a more affordable price.
The professors are only ripping off students if they wrote the book and receive royalties, which they keep. Very few professors do that. I'd agree that professors should be mindful of the textbook costs (many are) and only require one if it's the current version is needed often, so that old editions or copies on reserve in the library isn't an option.
3
While the author decries a very difficult circumstance for college students. I have to ask, What percentage of your bookstore's sales finance your university's costs? It is very common practice for universities to use books as a revenue stream. Most bookstores are run by contractors who are charged rent and a percentage of sales by the university. Add yourself to the publishers, et al. that you decry.
2
Several of my professors at San Francisco State University would put copies of the textbooks in the library on reserve. That way, if you couldn't purchase the book, you could always have access to it at the library.
2
I knew of people at a leading university where an instructor was told which textbook to assign for their classes. The textbook included an online access keys which contained questions that the instructor needed to use to assign homework. It was discovered that literally every single question that was in the entire question bank could be searched on google within seconds for the correct answer. So, the instructor chose not to use the material as it was compromised, (i.e. all answers were easily found). Soon after starting the class the instructor was informed by the department that if the students did not purchase the access code, then the entire university's contract with the publisher would be in jeopardy. One class not using the material to siphon funds from the students in the many hundreds of classes at this university was going to harm the entire place. Well, the instructor had no choice, and had to go back on his word and told the students that they did indeed have to buy the access code. It was said that there was a vibrant discussion after that announcement, and it came to light that all the students already knew that the answers were available on google. Furthermore, the students used this fact liberally to help them pass the various assignments given to them with all their online homework, not just this one class. So, not only is there price gouging, but the gougers apparently do not care that their intellectual property has been stolen and distributed.
5
@Jason Kendall It would be great to write up a public version of this story with all the actors involved identified. It is a great example of exploitative practices in higher education, here the publishers are shown to be the root cause.
5
The used book market is part of why books are so expensive. The publisher makes money in year 1 of sales, but by year 3 there are so many used books on the market that the publisher cannot sell many new ones. That means the publisher has to charge more per book to recoup its costs and make a profit because volume is reduced by the used book market.
4
I fully agree with the author. Though I wonder if perhaps exposure to the textbook scam might be the best way for students to learn about the true nature of business in America.
2
This is the ultimate deflection from an academic. The cost of college has risen at 2x the rate of inflation for 40 years. The private university that I attended in the early 80’s has raised tuitions from $8K/year to $>75K including room and board this year and within 5-6 years will exceed $100K per year. The basic cost issue is labor costs which constitute about 2/3 of a university’s variable costs. Virtually all 4 year institutions have tenure (inability to fire a prof) and tenured faculty represents >75% of full time faculty. This means, it is nearly impossible to close departments that no longer are needed or make financial sense or implement financially necessary reforms - all resulting increased tuitions. In institutions that keep sabbaticals, faculty take a paid year off every 7 or so years - By definition this drives up teaching expense. Very few non faculty positions are tenured. My daughter went to a well regarded liberal arts undergrad. With typical teaching load (2-3 courses per semester), the cost per class session cost approximately $500-700/single class. This is the cost of the most expensive broadway seat. I can assure you that the preparation and production values of each class did not meet Broadway standards. Net, net, faculty has to look no further than their own work rules to determine why higher ed is too costly
6
Full time faculty are not the cause of rising expenditures - administrators and administrative staff. Most universities have cut back on tenured faculty, relying heavily and low pay adjuncts and instructional spending has increased less than overall spending. In contrast spending on administration, administrator salaries have all rise sharply.
Tenured faculty are not the problem here.
58
Everuthing in student's life is expensive. Why focus on textbooks rather on tuition fees?
5
I took a course at a community college and was required to buy a $95 textbook.....that we never opened.
3
Not only textbooks but the use of grad students and lecturers to teach!
4
It is not just that professors assign expensive texts, American students pay exorbitant prices compared to what the rest of the world pays for the same books.
When I was studying mathematics a long time ago a professor assigned a $250 text book. Being a poor graduate student, I couldn't afford it. A grad student friend of mine from India bought the same book in India for about $20. He was nice enough to bring back a copy for me before the semester started. The printing and binding quality was somewhat less than the American version, but the contents were exactly the same.
24
I have been teaching for 15 years and honestly have never cared if the students purchase the require textbooks for my courses. Those who learn better through reading text to reinforce the lecture are welcome to purchase the text to do so, and those who do well without using the text can save themselves some money. I wrote the homework assignments that I use. If we rely on the text for the material, what is the point of the classroom?
However, this has become irrelevant in the past 6-8 years, since textbook companies have found another way to circumvent students who don't pay for expensive textbooks- selling subscriptions to their suite of products to library systems. Our university subscribes to one of these and I'm sure the costs are passed along to the students in the form of fees. Since they have "bought" it anyway, these references are now the source of all my suggested supplementary readings. It makes choosing references easy, but the students have no chance to opt-out of the fee. Reading them online is also a terrible experience since the format is nothing like an e-book.
I feel I should admit that I did write a small book in the subject that I teach courses about, but I don't require students to purchase it. Many of them do anyway so I make a donation to their scholarship fund in return.
3
After my freshman year I learned to not purchase textbooks until I knew the professor would actually use them. I can't tell you how many times a professor would have us buy a textbook that they never actually used. Many preferred to exclusively use their own lecture notes (about $8.00) but nonetheless a $250 book was listed as "required"
4
The textbook industry is in decline and will have difficulty surviving much longer. Unfortunately, this article will only hasten its demise. Major publishers are no longer considering new books and doing their best to wring what income they can from their current lists.
Whether the end of college textbooks and a dependence on free online resources is a good thing or a bad thing for students and professors is beside the point. We are witnessing the equivalent of climate change for publishing. It is inevitable.
4
Agreed. When I taught undergraduates in a college, I asked them to buy an old edition of a microbiology book. Indeed, any "new" book is already outdated in microbiology. I added the new stuff to the lectures. The first time I taught, I asked for the new book (I did not know the price). Soon after I told students about this new edition, the editor asked me to review the new edition and and I got a check for my review.
2
While professors can make decisions as individuals whether to assign students expensive textbooks or not, they cannot change the fact that companies like Pearson essentially have total monopolies over the entire textbook publishing industry, and therefore can charge whatever they want without consequence. Perhaps Dr. Wu wanted to keep the focus of the article narrow, but I can't help but feel like he missed the opportunity to expand the scope of his argument to address the role these monopolies play in skyrocketing prices.
194
@Blaire Frei Correct. I teach elementary, and Pearson owns my district.
3
On the other hand, students are often their own worst enemies. I notify my students at regular intervals starting 4 weeks prior to each semester that 1) the textbook IS required (and used extensively), 2) the edition I require is not the newest, and therefore is readily available used on Amazon and similar sites for less than $10 (shipping included!).
Yet many students simply wait and purchase/rent it used at the college bookstore, thus paying a great deal more. But then they gripe about how much they paid!
20
That happens to me, too. I’ll tell them how many editions they can go back and still be ok, and then they are buying from the bookstore a week into class!
3
@Jo Marin It's possible that some of this is the result of the disbursement of student loan monies. That generally doesn't happen until the start of the semester.
7
@Jo Marin At my university, students of limited economic means often have to wait to register for courses until their financial aid arrives. This might make it hard for them to find more affordable copies of text books before the first day of class.
12
I wrote a textbook. I did it with the hope to teach others. It is a tremendous effort but I do not expect to make any money. The reality is that if a book is popular then students can find dark copies on the web. I can appreciate that publishers charge hefty sums on honest copies to cover their costs. Blame the thieves, not the authors.
8
College textbooks have a very limited shelf-life. You read them once, pass the course, and then NEVER look at them again. The only books I kept from my college days were the novels from my English courses. Same thing with graduate school. Most college textbooks are verbal oatmeal. They get the job done, but they're not very memorable.
Wouldn't it be easier (and less expensive) to have students rent the electronic version of a textbook and read it on a Kindle or other device? It would certainly save a TON of paper (and save the planet). It would also be much easier to carry a 2-pound Kindle as opposed to 20 pounds of textbooks in a knapsack.
6
@Jack Connolly Publishers often pitch these e-textbooks to me. I have asked my students for years if they would prefer online rentals that were cheaper but had to be read online. They almost all prefer to read hard copies. I understand this - there is something about a physical copy that facilitates learning. As environmentally conscious as I try to be, I also keep in mind the materiality of learning as an educator as well. Most students don't want e-textbooks.
3
@Jack Connolly
I did not have to carry 20 pounds of books when an undergraduate student because my dormitory was a five-minute walk from each of the classroom buildings. I could return to my dormitory to pick up additional books in the ten-minute recess among classes.
@drn This honestly surprises me. My high school students constantly gripe about textbooks (especially the 10-pound monster in my American Lit class). I prefer hard-copy books myself, but I would think that a generation so steeped in technology would WANT an electronic alternative. Ya learn somethin' new every day!
1
I've been teaching for more decades than I care to admit, and find that for most but the most formulaic survey courses textbooks are usually a bad choice regardless of price. From the start of my teaching career I and my colleagues have preferred to assign a set of journal articles that generally give better and more targeted topical coverage, rather than the one-size-fits-all general survey approach of most commercial textbooks.
Assigning journal articles takes more prep time, and students initially often balk, preferring a handy source between two covers. But custom printing has been available and considerably less expensive for many years, and the advent of online journal sources at most university libraries obviate the necessity of even that relatively minor expense.
When real books are needed for depth of coverage or complexity of argument, I always take cost into account and rarely assign anything in hardback. The advent of online bookstores has made shopping for used books a bargain, even with postage included. In only a few cases have I been forced to assign a brand new edition, and when I do, I usually have alternatives in mind in case the bookstore's price point is too high; I tell then upfront what I regard as a reasonable limit on the price and say I will cancel an order if it can't make it under that bar. This has only rarely been a problem, and I did pull an order and assigned students cheaper books through online suppliers.
4
I learned as a returning adult student to contact each professor before I ordered a book, to ask the latest version required for any given textbook. I saved hundreds of dollars this way. I never, ever bought new.
What disgusts me slightly is professors who include their own hard-to-find-used, over $100 book, on a long list of books for the course, then ask students to read only 2-3 chapters. I think that should be looked at for what it is -- professors lining their own pockets.
6
It much easier for universities and professors to take the money from publishers and authors than from their own capital building budgets.
Cut the price of tuition by $1000/semester. Problem solved.
Or you can just steal the IP because, hey, we don't want to pay for it.
Professors aren’t getting a penny from publishers. That most definitely is not how it works.
48
@Jo Marin "NACS no longer receives information from publishers about where textbook money goes, but as recently as 2008, they provided that cost breakdown. At that time, around 15.4 cents of every dollar went toward marketing the textbooks, 11.7 cents went to the authors, and the largest chunk—32.2 cents—went to the basics: paper, printing, and paying publishers' employees."
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/08/28/how-your-textbook-dollars-are-divvied-up
I think there are several important issues missing here. The first is that the cost of books, while higher than anyone would like them to be, is a mere fraction of the high cost of higher education. I'd like to see efforts to reduce tuition come first because, after all, the academy controls those costs; the publishing companies control the cost of books.
Second, there are often no open source materials available, or those that are available are not as high quality. My first choice is quality over cost. I can help students mitigate the cost by placing multiple copies of the textbooks on reserve in the library.
Third, I think that textbooks have value and that the people who write them - our academic colleagues who are experts in their fields - deserve recognition and compensation for their work.
Perhaps we should break the cabal of the publishing companies and start self-publishing to bring down the cost of textbooks while maintaining the quality of the information presented.
39
@it wasn't me
It is true that many or all of the open textbooks (online for free) are not near the quality of the published versions. The textbook versions have higher quality figures made to order and well integrated with the text.
This is the way it is in Anatomy and Physiology, a major course for pre-health students. It is a dilemma for professors - sure we do not want to break the students budget on an overpriced book, but the free books are not near the quality.
I usually encourage students to buy an older and much cheaper version of the text (like 1/4 the cost or even much less), which is 99% the same as the newest edition. The textbook companies exploit the students in true capitalist fashion.
3
I'm a college adjunct. Over about 20 years of teaching composition and literature courses, I have rarely had the option to choose my own book. A department chair or writing program director does it. One WPD I knew received gifts so nice they equated to bribes and was also paid to write the intro to a book "tailored" to our school. It was an overpriced hodge-podge updated every year to gut the used-book market. I was ashamed to assign it.
Keep in mind that about half of all college profs are adjuncts, and that's about 70% at community colleges. The publishers can and do target their hard sell and bribery to the dept chairs. The aforementioed writing program director actually forced adjuncts to give classroom time to the publishing rep trying to sell us all on an on-line resource.
More and more I'd be able to teach sans textbook, thanks to the free resources online. I find and provide links where I can, for the students who never do buy the book, or who can't until part way through the semester.
I'm forced nest semester to accept a new edition of an Intro to Lit text -- the 13th edition. It's very little changed. I'd hoped for real updates -- newer writers, more women and writers of color, some representation of slam poetry. But no. It's changed just enough to make the 12th edition unusable. Everyone has to buy a new book.
At least I've got my hands on an extra copy to put on reserve. My CC students work so hard, some with 2 even 3 jobs, and families. This is wrong.
109
@Kathryn
Sorry, I'm an old fogey, but what's an intro to lit text? I certainly had lit in high school and some classes in college (I was a science major though) and we only read actual books or a few anthologies in high school.
Any book worth reading in a lit course should be available cheaply on internet used book sites. I got my books used from the college bookstore. If it isn't available, then it isn't worth teaching.
4
@Kathryn
Ditto. But when this happened in my Lit class, I put the required textbook in my syllabus, the one I turn in to the chair, and then told my students not to purchase it. I added 2 novels (1984 and Brave New World) and a variety of readings I put in my course pak.
4
As the heir (and former assistant) of a math textbook writer, I am appalled at the cost of textbooks. I agree entirely with the comments of "California Science Prof" -- just buy the previous edition.
The amounts the publishers charge are outrageous. But they produce a new revision every 2nd or 3rd year so that professors will insist upon students using the newest edition. The changes in the new edition may sometimes be significant, but are often minimal (a few new problems at the back of the book).
I think the professors who decide which books to use for their classes should be responsible for comparing the new and previous editions, and should inform their students whether it is worth the extra cost of buying the newest edition.
3
How about math texts and their very high prices and new editions required every couple of years? What new developments occur in basic college math to require a new edition? Sometimes the new editions contain the same material as the old but with chapters switched and new graphics added, and then the profs often only use a handful of the chapters, leaving most of the books unread--for say $250 a pop.
6
They don't have an obligation to anything, especially student textbooks, some of which they author or co-author and profit from immensely.
One professor I had once sold our class a packet of photocopies for $32 each.
I dropped the class. He asked me to pay him. I told him I'd return the photocopies. But I didn't.
2
This article made me remember about an expensive textbook I had to buy long ago for a required class for my degree that was written by the instructor who was teaching the class. He was the only structures instructor, and there was no way around it unless you went to the engineering school and took two semesters of mechanics. The instructor was as terrible as the textbook, so I ended up going to the Engineering school, but I vividly remember feeling how unfair the whole thing was.
2
Winding up 40 years of teaching in a university, albeit not in the US.
I don't use or assign textbooks. There aren't any (and it is not just a matter of language, there really aren't any in my field).
I assign readings in Hebrew and English from journal articles, chapters in books and books. For these there are libraries and data bases. I do not make it easy for the student. I do not provide links to the article. Going to the library- as I am old-fashioned I believe students should go to the library- is part of the deal. learning how to use data bases there and in other forms is part of the deal.
Textbooks are a waste.
3
My first Materials Science textbook I bought used. The author, who years later became my Ph.D. advisor did not mind. That book transformed my life. Professors are not ripping off students, it's the publishers. In science and engineering, textbooks are essential.
5
Thanks for this article Mr. Wu. Having two children move through undergrad and post- grad, I am well aware of the exceptional costs, not only with textbooks, but tuition and fees. What the article did not address, and perhaps you can in a later piece, is the adjunct professor or instructor dilemma at most major universities. Adjuncts barely make above poverty level salaries with minimal to no benefits; yet they are relied on heavily at even our most esteemed university systems. Tuition, on average, goes up 5-8% a year; adjunct pay stays the same. I would bet that there are no adjunct administrators at these institutions. In addition, I bet if you surveyed the students, most would be unaware of who is adjunct versus tenured.
28
When I created lecture videos for my Useful Genetics online course, I used a Creative Commons Share-Alike copyright license and also posted them on YouTube. One bonus is that now face-to-face genetics courses can assign them in place of an expensive textbook.
3
I’ve taught law for 8 years. I create and compile my textbook from many sources and it’s free for my students. Some subjects (consumer finance law) are appropriate for that type of treatment but perhaps not all subjects. It’s usually easy to get permission to use the IP of others. But it’s much more work for the professors.
4
@Andrea Negroni It would be great if you could make this resource available to other instructors and students.
I teach part-time at a local university, one section of an intro to statistics course. I was only a few years removed from graduate school myself when I was asked to teach, so I was very conscious of pricing when choosing a book. I ended up going with a well-reviewed book that hadn't had a new edition in about 3 years. It was available new for $60 and used for about $25. In the 4 years I've been teaching this course, there hasn't been a new edition published. This is great, since there's a robust used market. There are also many other options for students that didn't exist when I was a student. Texts can be rented, the university library keeps copies, and some books have electronic versions that can be licensed for the semester.
I think the author hits it on the head when talking about instructors being out of touch with the costs to students. There seems to be a lot of inertia around curricula, and instructors want to stick with the familiar. This is especially true for adjunct faculty who get paid a flat rate, regardless of how much work they put into a class. It also doesn't help that publishers routinely market their newest books to faculty, similarly to drug companies marketing to doctors...
9
@JB Good for you! When I taught intro stat (when another professor went on leave) I was shocked that (1) the textbook cost so much (2) the data sets theoretically weren't available if you bought it used, and (3) the version sold internationally was less than $20 -- same text, but they changed the homework problems. It was also the 12th edition -- but despite the advances in higher level statistics in the last 50 years, intro stat was little changed from when I first taught it decades ago. I let students use any edition they could find used.
2
I teach grad and undergrad business classes and I found a pretty liberating piece of data. My students don't read anything class related; textbooks never. They have made it to junior year of college pretty much on expression of opinions and feelings that are strongly validated in their frosh and soph classes (teachers applaud every point of view). Level of involvement in social media exceeds interest in learning by a significant factor. Enlightened minds in my school have repeatedly demanded that faculty alter their teaching styles to accommodate different learning styles (like, some students learn musically), and different expectations (as all want an A), and different levels of motivation (i.e., some student are unmotivated).
Now, I am sure that some (like your child) scour texts with total interest and remember everything, attend every class, do all work, and are plain outstanding in every way even if not always recognized as such. I am speaking of other people's children.
So it has been a few years now, I assign no text books. I make copies from business magazines, include free information on the web, ask students to see youtube videos (say on Logit regression), and look at free stuff posted (journal articles on psychnet). Not that they really read much, but at least they are not getting further into debt
I am going on sabbatical to write at least two texts for my classes which I will make available free. Totally free.
63
"Are we helping rip off our students?" ... Absolutely!
Publishers push out yearly editions with marginal changes, professors require latest editions, secondary market for last year's editions collapse, and students donate their textbooks to paper recycling projects on campus.
And ... parasitic relationships between universities, big retailers (e.g., Amazon, Barnes and Noble) and the campus bookstore can contractually require professors to order their textbooks (while providing them a complementary, free desk copy) through the store and for students to pay the obscene prices for those new editions.
In this age, cutting edge work is often available through arxiv-like platforms. So the best and most cost effective solution (from the student's point of view) is for professors to use a textbook that is older and much cheaper (sometimes you'll pay more for the shipping than the text) and supplement it with recently-published scholarly works.
10
One of the biggest issues, at least in law school, is the constant issuance of "new editions" which are then required to be purchased. It means that students aren't able to purchase used books (because the used, last edition is "outdated"), and can prevent recouping some cost because you aren't able to resell/sell back your book when a new edition is coming out. Professors often required multiple books be purchased for their courses and my cost for law school textbooks easily exceeded $1,000/year. There is no good reason that a professor couldn't keep requiring an "old" edition and distribute supplementary material for any important additions/updates.
3
For most basic courses (Chemistry 101, Calculus, Foreign Languages, etc) nothing has changed in the field for years to justify a new edition. A 10-20 year old book or older should suffice.
26
@Paul Students need the internet access codes to practice the online exercises. I taught university-level foreign languages for several years and those language labs with the tapes and the videos are gone. Extensive practice with native speakers is essential. Chemistry and calculus no doubt have internet-based instant feedback exercises as well. It's not just a "textbook" anymore.
12
@CM But why can't we go back to learning from just plain textbooks. I was in college in the mid-aughts and was able to learn what I needed without internet-based instant feedback, etc. just like all the generations before me.
6
Textbooks that are not new, unique, or different presentations of standard curricula are probably an unnecessary expense. Forcing students to buy the latest rehashed version (2nd, 3rd, edition etc. ) is also unnecessary where minor supplements should be adequate. That said, without some direction to valid sources, there is always the risk of false or misinformation when students are encouraged to obtain material from the internet instead of using a textbook deemed, by peer review, to be suitable for a particular course of study. In the internet age, those in textbook writing and publishing will probably need to investigate a new business model such as musicians have had to.
6
Have been teaching college courses for a decade and never used a textbook. It may be subject specific, but I don’t u defat and why students can’t learn from their class notes. They of course have to show up for class.
2
Thank you so much for writing this article. This has been a problem and a scam for over at least two decades. Another way colleges scam students is by buying back textbooks for a few dollars at the end of each semester and then re-selling the used copy at nearly the same price as a new one. Schools should be prohibited from doing this, they should be required to sell the used book at the same price they buy it back.
8
There are clearly less e expensive versions of any given textbook - including free and reduced price online versions. But what I have found since my department has switched to an open=source, online text book is that the overall a performance of the majority of my students has significantly declined. Because it costs nothing, the value to students is nothing, and they apparently do not look at it. I asked one of my students recently, and she told me she buys a hard copy specifically so that she will use the book, and that most of her friends who "use" the free online versions of books never look at them. It is also true that the quality of the explanations of key concepts and especially the diagrams used to illustrate them are frequently inferior to those in other text books. I am unconvinced that free online resources do my students much good. They are savingg money at the expense of their grades.
15
I have told students to use textbooks that are available online through the library website, rent and buy and sell to each other once they are done. There are ways to reduce costs and we as professors have an obligation to let students know and be ok when they do crowd source. It is awful to expect them to spend money. But you know what is the biggest source of abuse financially- food halls. Universities subcontract those out and it’s always the companies contracted that make money.
7
My cleaning person at 35 years old just completed two years of community college working full time. With a combination of scholarships and employer aid, she managed to get through with a 3.9 average and is off to a four year institution in accounting.
She is hard working, disciplined, intelligent and dedicated to being a good student.The only thing that had the potential for tripping her up was $500 a semester for books both hardcover and online. She couldn’t buy used hardcovers as the professors always assigned the most updated versions.
In math. In biology. In public speaking.
Why?
Again, without the help of others, the books were unaffordable. And had no resale value at the end of the semester.
She reported that many of her classmates dropped out because it was difficult to share books with others and they had no ability to afford them.
Shame on the professors who assign these high priced books. And shame on the publishing industry for being such a roadblock to poor students ability to succeed in school.
165
@It’s About Time. Thanks for pointing this out.
5
I struggled for years trying to balance choosing reasonably priced texts, or at least those that a student might want to keep for reference, with the inconvenience of asking them to access materials on reserve at the library. i got some relief as students got more online access, but i still ended up going thru getting permission to reproduce at least some materials i could distribute for the cost of copying. someone mentioned the practice of issuing a new edition every couple of years to destroy the used market, but has anyone looked at what students get when they do resell their texts? this is a racket!
2
I earned a degree in mathematics and took numerous science classes. Most if not all of the textbooks don’t need new editions as the material is exactly the same. Once you get into year 3 or 4 in your major their may be some justification for a new edition every few years.
In the case of my undergraduate degree in mathematics I remember one of my professors saying that your degree will take you to 1920 in terms of material. A masters degree will get you to the late 50’s and a PHD the rest of the way in your area of expertise.
An exception to the rule is computer science that is new enough that significant changes warranting new editions take place every few years. Looking back at what I learned in the 90’s to Obama in a masters degree in this subject it’s easy to see how out of date the books short of K&R.
6
@JimH I would argue biology and related fields such as neuroscience are also a pretty big exception to this.
1
@spiderbee
But at what levels and how many texts you do need?
My first class at university, and this was decades ago, the professor pushed us to buy more of his books on top of the one he authored that was already required for the class. The books were overpriced, lacking in diversity of perspective (it was a modern history class) and we'd have been far better served by a variety of source materials and a more objective survey of multiple perspectives (primary and secondary) on the various events studied. (No, his book/s did not achieve those ends.)
It was also telling that when a different professor of more junior status stepped in and taught about one third of the course, with a variety of free materials and library references suggestions, just about every student thought the class improved enormously.
Apart from the obvious slick salesman routine of the more senior professor, I was appalled that the university allowed that kind of self-serving profiteering to go on. And I remain appalled as, sadly, it seems only to be worse these days.
That was my first inkling that education is as much of a business for profit, institutional and/or professorial, as it is an endeavor to empower students through knowledge. Welcome to the real world, I guess.
This topic could well be added in as a line item to the current debate about student debt, inflated college fees, etc.
3
Instead of textbooks being priced more cheaply, universities should consider subsidizing required textbooks. It takes years and multiple experts to research and product content for a quality textbook - in my opinion justifying a high sticker price. Requesting that professors write them as a public service will lead to fewer textbooks. University subsidies may seem unreasonable (although I don't understand how because my education costed an arm and a leg), and I can see the next generation moving towards the Cengage subscription model.
10
I teach composition and like to assign a textbook with a reader (usually around $60 new or $28 rented). I have noticed with the newer editions that many of the readings can simply be found online. This is frustrating and I will most likely not be assigning a text next semester. This does, however, put the pressure on my students to attend and be attentive. Yes, that should be a given, but...
Another issue has to be a part of the problem but is not addressed here: many financial aid packages roll in the price of books. With the ability to finance, many students don't look twice at the cost of their books. This behavior is very American; one only has to look at the average car or home buying behavior to see the exact same forces at play. This is a big win for publishers and authors. When a student pays with what amounts to monopoly money at the time of purchase, they won't be aware of how badly they are being ripped off. Although this applies to the whole structure of college tuition, doesn't it?
I have never encountered a professor who didn't try to keep the cost down for their students. We are aware, and many of us are trying to figure out the best options. This conversation is being had, rest assured.
22
@Sarah I teach philosophy and usually have assigned textbooks in the same price range ($60-$80 new), but I'm taking the plunge for my lower-level courses next semester and will put together a list of readings available online for free. The textbooks I've used for lower-level courses mostly just take influential articles published in academic journals, edit them down a bit to make them easier for students to read, and then add a one-paragraph editor's synopsis of each article.
I'm sure it's not a trivial amount of work to put together such a volume, but the only thing the students (and I) would lose if I just give them the PDF version of the published article is the slight convenience of having it abridged for them. I figure I can make up for that by telling them to skip certain sections that are too complicated or tangential to what I want to discuss, though, as you mention, this will require them to pay closer attention to where to find the readings and what sections of the readings to focus on.
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@Sarah Actually, most financial aid packages do NOT include textbooks. Even those that do often don't provide enough funding to cover the cost of tuition entirely, let alone the "discretionary" cost of the assigned reading materials.
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I tell my students to get the 2nd last edition used, usually about $20 instead of $150. I can tell them in lecture what is newly discovered. Some professors care.
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@California Science Prof I handled this issue in exactly the same way. In addition, I placed a copy of the textbook in the library's reference section with a one-day during the week/three-days on the weekend check-out.
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@California Science Prof
One of my economics professors did this. The newest edition often has no differences except the content is rearranged so the page numbers are different. This is so students won’t use old editions. My college required that there were two copies of every required text book in the library. I always bought an older edition used and then went to the library and marked off which pages corresponded between the newer and the older edition. It was a lot of work but I ended up graduating with no student loan debt.
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I made a point of assigning a previous edition of the textbook and supplied a link to used copies on Amazon Ten bucks versus $95.
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For most American law courses, I don’t know why textbooks are needed at all. Cases are available online, as are statutes.
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Thank you for this article. Predatory pricing of textbooks required by Professor leads to more student loan debt burden. This racket has been ongoing for years. Shedding light on this practice is helpful but colleges need to step up and if not then if necessary government oversight to uncover who is pocketing this money.
Up to a thousand dollars and more for one semester is not uncommon. Way more for Graduate level courses.
This needs follow up and action
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It would be good for the students to keep the textbook they studied from for the future reference. Many opt not to do it. As for the cost of the textbooks, the way I understand it, the publishers and the authors do not get any royalties on the used books. Thus, there is a pressure to publish new editions. Having said this, the new editions often contain updated and quite valuable material. Some publishers put on line (as a part of the book cost) quizzes and various supplementary materials. The reason why the authors like to teach from their own book is because they designed the book to include what they feel strongly is important, and what reflects their expertise. While textbooks are indeed expensive, I believe that they are an integral part of education.
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@V. G. Let's see. My college calculus professor who of course wrote the text, insisted that the latest edition be purchased at huge cost. So you feel that the latest edition is so important that the professor (who of course isn't doing it for his own monetary gain), absolutely felt that his older editions left out something crucial (in calculus) that we couldn't do without? And of course, the "crucial updates" couldn't have been handed out in copied sheets? Or perhaps there were so many of them the earlier editions were useless? And his texts (in calculus) were so crucially different from all other texts .... Certainly it was "integral".
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@John - John, this practice is no longer legal. Professor have not been allowed to require their students to buy their own books since the 1990s. If this happened to you recently you should report the professor and possibly the university to the authorities.
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@John
The Copyright law prohibits copying and handing out the materials which would prevent the recipients from purchasing the book.
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It is the professors who write the textbooks and the publishers of the textbooks who drive up the prices and thus their incomes. The real cost of a textbooks should be about the same today as it was in 1970. But the real price today is 4 or 5 times the price it was then. No change in quality. Yes, it is like medicine in this country. The suppliers are basically implicitly conspiring to drive up prices in order to increase their incomes. The way college and medicine are funded in this country permit ridiculous prices and ridiculous incomes to the providers of medicine and education. And, no, making everything free is not the way to drive down prices. It would no doubt make things worse. Someone needs to know the value of a dollar!
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@Gordon Wiggerhaus Yes, professors shouldn't have had an increase in relative income since the 1970s, just meet the price of inflation...
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Sure it would be nice of professors to choose cheaper textbooks when they are just as good. How often do professors neglect to check out options? Who knows? But this issue is largely a distraction from the costs of tuition, which are greater by orders of magnitude. Why are the costs of college rising? Look at the real trends -- most obviously the bloated numbers of administrators and useless policies they are hired to enforce.
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How about simply assigning an older edition? For many subjects - most undergraduate math and physical sciences courses - there would be no real difference in quality of education, just cost.
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I'm not so sure that the cost of textbooks is really as high as the article implies. When I was an undergraduate more than 20 years ago, I routinely spent over $200 for textbooks for each of my courses. Digital access codes of $100-150 typically come with access to an electronic version of the textbook. It seems to me that, when adjusted for inflation, the cost of textbooks has gone down.
As a professor, I do pay attention to textbook costs. In my experience, most of us do. But, for the subject I teach the open source alternatives simply aren't up to snuff. Perhaps if textbooks authorship counted towards tenure this might change. But it's hard to see this as a major problem.
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@T I'm happy that you're "not sure", because I am certainly sure that textbooks are really as high. I'd be interested in what school you teach at where the text book prices are often astronomical. I'd also be fascinated to learn what subject you teach and what is not "up to snuff" in available alternatives.
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A clever inflammatory headline obscures a more complex issue. First, most professors do not author the texts they assign and so do not profit in the way Tim Wu implies. Second, universities can -and many do- provide copies of texts in their libraries so that students do not have to purchase them. Third, you leave out the campus bookstores which are also complicit in the mark-up. Many professors encourage students to seek online and used options when purchasing so as to avoid institutional -and not professorial- profiting. Does Tim Wu feel it would be better for students to choose their own texts in a fee market -if so should we also not put that equation in the context of which universities they choose to attend? As an academic, did Tim Wu do his own due diligence to research the data on the issue with a breakdown by sector, discipline and institution -or does he feel grabbing the headlines by pillorying only faculty is really justified?
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Textbooks have long been a rip-off and not only that, dangerous to the health of students. I recall in my Engineering classes people getting shoulder and back issues from having to haul heavy books back and forth to classes and tutorials. Many of us lived off campus and had to haul 30+ lbs of paper in and back on public transit each day. Now there is no reason that most texts can't be developed as e-reader material - updated cheaply each year. I just don't get it unless the kickbacks to colleges and professors who publish them are a huge amount of yearly revenue - and given the insane tuition costs in this country I would find that hard to believe
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@E Campbell, Textbooks for high school AP classes are similarly expensive. No wonder so many kids are allowed to take so many AP classes, up to eleven during their high school career. The textbooks could cost 1,500 dollars. Aren't college professors among the most passionate about how economic inequality puts poor kids at a disadvantage? The least they could do is to compile for free textbooks for high school AP classes.
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Did a study on this a few years back. The same textbook is priced locally, regionally and nationally. The driver in price determination is the price students are able to bare and not in function of competition between similar textbooks. As that the teacher mandates a specific text book for a topic, and based on the number of courses in that area using that textbook will drive the price higher. So it’s an inverted relationship, greater demand begets greater price although cost decreases as publication increases.
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Capitalism's greed bad for business, again.
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