Posted on 03/09/2020 10:20:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Getting ripped off on textbooks has long been part of the standard American college experience, up there with frat parties, cheap pizza, and bad choices. Now, though, one student has taken up the cause in a class-action lawsuit that calls out the three main textbook publishers for alleged antitrust violations. The lawsuit alleges that publishers Pearson, Cengage and McGraw-Hill, along with college bookstores, formed a conspiracy to monopolize the textbook market and inflate the price of course materials.
The named plaintiff, Martha Barabas, sued on her own behalf and for the class of “at least hundreds of thousands if not millions of college students who were required to purchase textbooks and other course materials from the Defendants.”
The lawsuit focuses on taking down the “Inclusive Access” model – which is a digital-textbook system that purports to reduce textbook prices for student. In reality, the complaint alleges, the system requires students to obtain course materials only in an official online format, which in turn permits publishers to gouge students for those materials. Students, who routinely spend over $1,200 per year on textbooks, no longer have the option to head to eBay or Craigslist for second-hand materials. Furthermore, students using online materials can’t recoup their costs by selling their books at semester’s end.
The complaint spells out a troubling narrative. The defendant publishers banded together in 2016 to form “Educational Publishers Enforcement Group (EPEG), supposedly to fight textbook counterfeiting. According to the compliant, though, “EPEG created a ‘white list’ of acceptable retailers, and encouraged its members to refuse to sell to anyone [not on it.]” By using this “white list,” EPEG was able to exclude sellers who sold used textbooks, despite that the majority of them had not been involved in any counterfeiting. As a direct result of squelching the competition,
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I suppose people in the publishing industry will want the text book firms to win this one, but the people want Barabas.
The entire college/university system should be criminally charged under RICO statutes.
“The entire college/university system should be criminally charged under RICO statutes.”
This.
Yep, text book scam. ....been going on since I can remember. ..I think the profs are in on it too. ..
Print publishing is dead, and partly the reason for the justification of the exorbitant prices. Before online access, publishers ran small low volume print runs to get the updated text books out year after year. The smaller the run, the more the actual price per book. Some books probably cost $40 per unit if the runs are small enough.
Now, I see no reason the content should not be included with the course in electronic format. There really isnt any new content to publish for most subjects. Just updates as new material is found, say in physics, and medicine.
Its a scam, they know it, and the whole education content creation industry needs to change.
RE: Print publishing is dead, and partly the reason for the justification of the exorbitant prices.
The only problem is -— these same publishers ALSO control the digital publications as well.
Aced the course.
It's a total scam.
Amen. We were continually screwed in college back in the 70s. They hated letting us buy used textbooks. So, revise a page or two in the book and require us to buy the new one for the class. That happened a lot.
Another little trick that they used to pull was requiring us to buy a brand new book and then when we got the class they only wanted to reference a small portion of the book. Maybe one chapter was all we were required to read out of the book.
I had a statistics class in my junior year and we were required to use the textbook that coincidentally one of the faculty members had written. It was an open joke because with the book, term after term you were given about 20 Xerox pages correcting errors in the book on the first day of class.
I found it quite telling that the professor who wrote the book and probably the whole department were not in the least bit chagrined.
“Yep, text book scam. ....been going on since I can remember. ..I think the profs are in on it too. ..”
Interesting statement. I have noticed a few of the instructors I am in classes with are published through these companies. I think you are absolutely correct.
Stupid high tuitions
high priced books...
broken curriculum and degree programs...
All designed to keep the cash flowing into these institution/indoctrination camps...
another part of the education system that is broken.
Final year teaching chemistry at a university (42nd year). If you taught organic chemistry from my undergrad textbook from 1969-70 you wouldn’t need to change that much. Much to agree with in many of the posts.
There are some efforts to create free resources. I’m most familiar with Rice University and their. OpenStax open source textbook initiative. Two things that have made me cautious on proceeding:
1. Online homework packages are now available, either packaged with textbook or standalone. Given the limited attention spans and poor study habits of many students, these have value in letting students get rapid feedback at convenient (for them) times.
2. Considerable attention must be paid to ensuring comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act in terms of accessibility. Publishers pay much more attention to these niceties than I ever could (example, posting an online lecture is realtively easy but converting to closed captioning can be a real chore, especially in science where the words are not necessarily standard voice recognition dictionary ready).
The scam nowadays (and I think well presented in the claim) is this online code garbage. Used to be that you could buy a new overpriced book, or a used slightly less overpriced book. The online code things are often nontransferable, and if the teacher is in on the racket, they can require classwork that can only be accessed via the online code. There’s also no resale value to a book that’s only useful if it comes with a valid online code, so it destroys the dlsecndart market as well as the end of semester beer fund, which is the cruellest joke of them all.
That'll buy a lot of iTunes downloads, vapes, and bottled water. /s
When I was in grad school (early ‘80s) I took a course on reliability centered maintenance that was written by a fellow company employee. He was long retired, but one of my colleagues had his phone number. I took a chance and called. Brilliant guy. It ended up being a long and informative conversation.
A few days later a signed copy of his book arrived. I took it to the next class - the university bookstore only sold crappy Xeroxes. The class flipped out. I called him back and asked why he wasn’t selling his. He said he was ready for another print run but the universities blew him off. Guess they were making more money with their Xerox machine.
“Maybe one chapter was all we were required to read out of the book.”
All my books cost well over $40 each back in the 1980s.
“Yep, text book scam. ....been going on since I can remember. ..I think the profs are in on it too. ..”
It was going on when I was a student, 40 years ago, though the prices were much lower back then. One of the electives I took was “Engineering in History,” and the professor didn’t assign us a textbook. Instead, he wrote a set of notes, which told the students everything they needed to know to pass the exams, no more, no less. Then he put the notes in duotang folders, called it the “Engineering History Compendium,” and sold them for $2 each. Even in those days, it was a great deal. I think he only got away with it because he was also the associate dean.
Eventually these alternatives will become known and used and higher education will be in BIG trouble.
I had an elective with that title at UCF (FTU at that time) in about 1973 or 1974. Pretty good course actually. I kept the text book for years afterward because I found it so interesting.
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