Pardon my French, but when a required textbook costs up to $300, it’s time to resort to expletives. September comes as a punch in the wallet for students everywhere. I doubt anyone will die of shock to hear that the price of higher education is out of control. It’s astronomical in the most literal sense; college bills have shot through the roof, past the stratosphere, and are hanging out somewhere near the Milky Way.
Textbooks aren’t the most significant of the fees associated with college, but the cost does add up over the course of several semesters. Differing studies have found that the average U.S. student spends between $600 and $1,200 a year on textbooks and supplies. If there was one question I heard over and over again while working at a textbook annex, it was this: why? What exactly makes textbooks so expensive in comparison to other printed literature?
Glossy Pages? Really?
As with any complex problem, there’s some divergence on the answer to that. A Mental Floss article writes that basically, with all the fancy graphs and glossy pages in textbooks, companies claim that production costs are much steeper. The National Association of College Stores has stated that 33 cents out of every dollar involved goes towards the production of a book. To be fair, textbooks usually have far lower circulation numbers than most novels, which does keep printing costs high for the limited number of copies entering the market. But if that sounds fairly unlikely to you when posed as the sole reason for a three-digit price tag, you’re not alone.
Textbook Spyder, an online search engine for textbooks, broke down where every textbook dollar goes. The takeaway is that while printing costs are indeed high, there’s still room for retail price optimization. In February 2014, a report by advocacy group PIRG estimated that the price of textbooks rose 82% between 2002 and 2013. That’s a far steeper rise than the current rate of inflation should allow. The report concluded that, “Not only are students choosing not to purchase the materials they are assigned by their professor, but they are knowingly accepting the risk of a lower grade to avoid paying for the textbook.”
Another issue in a convoluted situation is that, as a recent New York Times article points out, students themselves don’t want to let go of books for significantly less than what they originally paid. It’s a natural impulse, but yet another factor in what drives the Ouroboros of high prices leading to still more high prices. And a discussion of textbooks wouldn't be complete without touching on the role of the course instructor. While many professors make an effort to use less expensive course materials, inevitably, there are some who don't place the price of a text as one of the more important factors in its selection.
Is Change Coming?
There are a few ways to reduce your textbook bill, but none of them are ideal. Federal law requires that colleges post an online list of course materials before a class begins, allowing for students to make price comparisons. Textbook rental companies take some of the bite out of the most expensive titles that can’t be purchased used at an affordable price. There’s no resale value at the end of the semester, of course, because you don’t own the book, but it’s a much smaller fee to swallow.
In November of 2013, two senators introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act, which would make textbooks openly available to students for free online. It would also require the Government Accountability Office to provide an updated report on textbook prices to Congress by 2017. To learn more about the bill, or to show support, click here.
Image by damianosullivan.
About the author
Leah Dearborn is a Boston-based writer with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in international relations from UMass Boston. She started writing for LitReactor in 2013 while paying her way through journalism school and hopping between bookstore jobs (R.I.P. Borders). In the years since, she’s written articles about everything from colonial poisoning plots to city council plans for using owls as pest control. If it’s a little strange, she’s probably interested.
