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Textbooks are not the problem with college costs. We, as students, all implicitly understand that the real issue is with out-of-control tuition. Cornell University’s tuition for New York State residents in 1990 was roughly $13,600, adjusted for inflation, but today Cornell’s tuition for New York residents is $42,000 a year, having outpaced inflation by more than 200%.
Keep your eye on the ball: we need to catch up to countries in the “civilized” world[AM1] , like Argentina and Panama, by fully funding public colleges through the government and addressing the decades of public funding cuts for higher education. We also need to address our culture which only values education insofar as it provides you a job and creates money for employers. But in a microcosm of a microcosm, textbook costs remain a problem in higher education.
First, the simple truth is that most students do not fully use textbooks (something I can personally attest to). With the demands of multiple classes, work, sleep and social life, reading and comprehending every page of a textbook is a dream for college students. For some students, a textbook is not even necessary; I’ve done just fine in classes having barely touched the “required” textbook.
Second, the average full-time undergraduate student will spend a lot on textbooks – nearly $5,000 by graduation. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it’s important to remember that while tuition is usually paid for by parents, loans or scholarships, the price of textbooks is often paid out-of-pocket, leading more than 1 in 10 students to skip meals and 1 in 4 to work more hours to buy textbooks, Education Data Initiative found.
So, what do we get for our starvation? We receive “new editions” of textbooks with no substantive changes and chapters rearranged to render previous editions unusable. While these new textbooks are a rip-off for students, they make textbook companies a lot of money. That’s why textbooks are, on average, revised and reprinted every 3 years. Are we really seeing such rapid fundamental advances in, say, biology or economics, to warrant the 21st edition of a Bio or Econ 101 textbook?
Barring that, we get the dreaded “digital access codes.” With declining paper book sales, textbook providers are supplementing lost income by having students pay $100 or more for the ability to receive a full grade. These digital access codes supposedly make it easier for professors to grade work, although free software already exists. Conspicuously, digital access codes also prevent the reselling or sharing of textbooks.
The blame for all this should be put squarely at the feet of publishers. College textbook prices, like tuition, have outpaced inflation, largely because textbook publishing is a $3.1 billion industry mostly controlled by only 5 companies. As a result, there is little incentive for prices to go down, and students, professors and colleges have few people to bargain with.
The use of digital access codes ought to be phased out or paid for by universities. Paying for class is one thing, but paying to receive a grade in said class is unacceptable.
Additionally, classes should move toward using free digital Open-Source Educational Resources (OERs) like MyOpenMath or Open Textbook Library. Finally, textbook publishing companies should be broken up and a federal body should be established to regulate collegiate educational material.
To be clear, I’m not against textbooks. They are a useful educational supplement. But as it stands, the goal of textbooks is generating revenue, not providing education; they are another segment in the devaluation of higher education in the U.S. We must stop the mutilated vision of education as simply a means of achieving more money and only then will we be ready to seriously address the issue of cost in higher education and guarantee a public college education to every citizen of the United States, no matter their background or class.
