Publishing costs and virtual content cause prices to skyrocket
Jason Aguirre
The prices of textbooks have nearly tripled in the past two decades, prompting many students to not buy textbooks or other essential class materials at all.
According to a 2004 congressional investigation, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) says that college textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation since the late 80s. Unable to find work, students staying in college longer have to be creative, or stingy, about how they meet a classes reading requirements.
"Tuition is bad enough but even with financial aid I can't always get the books I need," said Deborah Guenther, a 22 year-old medical administration student, " I at least try to get the main one but sometimes teachers want three or four 'supplemental reading' books. Which we don't even use most times."
For a first-year, full-time student at a two year college like De Anza, textbooks account for over 70% of education cost. De Anza's own financial aid program cites a $1,665 textbook allocation for the school year. Although many students question the cause and need for such an investment, some are questioning the need to buy any textbooks at all.
In response to GAO probing, publishers claim that much of the increase in cost is from improvements and text supplements such as CDs and web-sites. According to the state Public Interest Research Groups, these changes raise the cost of each new edition by as much as 12%."I haven't been in the bookstore this semester," said digital publishing major Nathan Saso. "If I absolutely have to have a textbook, to do the assignments, I just download it for free. Why would I give those bastards my money?"
Harvard economics chair James K. Stock has stated that new editions are often not about significant improvements to the content.
"New editions are to a considerable extent simply another tool used by publishers and textbook authors to maintain their revenue stream, that is, to keep up prices,"
Twenty-six year-old Joe Alexander (undecided) didn't pass his first college math course, but when he retook it with a different instructor the next semester, he found that a different version was being used.
"The content was pretty much identical, but the [workbook] problems were different so my old version was useless even though it was newer."
Another GAO finding, one that The Association of American Publishers denies, is that textbook prices are adjusted based on the financial situation in a given area, often to take advantage of poor economies.
The GAO report states, "U.S. college textbook prices may exceed prices in other countries because prices reflect market conditions found in each country, such as the willingness and ability of students to purchase the textbook."
Thirty year-old Andrea Ortiz, majoring in education, thinks much of the blame falls on the teachers.
Richard Daley, a newcomer to the auto mechanics program, disagrees, "A lot changes every year, and we have to know how to work on the latest car models." Daley, 27, concedes that for some courses like English or ancient history, not enough has changed to justify the cost to students."They[teachers] get by with so little funding for projects, trips, everything else, they should just let us use older textbooks, since...how much has really changed that they need a new version every year?"
"For reading about the civil war or 'conjunction-junctions,' we could be using books from ten years ago and still get the point."
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-02-12/college-costs-free-textbooks/53123522/1
