Posted on 08/08/2015 1:09:57 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
Students hitting the college bookstore this fall will get a stark lesson in economics before they've cracked open their first chapter. Textbook prices are soaring. Some experts say it's because they're sold like drugs.
According to NBC's review of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, textbook prices have risen over three times the rate of inflation from January 1977 to June 2015, a 1,041 percent increase.
"They've been able to keep raising prices because students are 'captive consumers.' They have to buy whatever books they're assigned," said Nicole Allen, a spokeswoman for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
It is a criminal racket IMHO. They often make minor changes to a required book, forcing students to buy the newest edition rather than being able to buy a used book. The profit rate must be enormous. You would think prices would have dropped since so much information is online but that is not the case. I just get the feeling that organized crime must have their hand in it.
Nope. Not even close.
The cost per ounce of a premium candy bar has gone from 16.6 cents in 1975, to about 58 cents in 2015. That's well in line with inflation. In fact, at least according to this inflation calculator: http://www.in2013dollars.com/1975-dollars-to-2015-dollars, candy has increased below the inflation rate, which would have put the increase to about 75 cents per ounce.
Put the books on a server, charge (reasonably) for the download, and come into the 21st century.
In 1977, Pres Carter signed a bill that eliminated the ability of textbook companies to depreciate books in storage. Previously, companies could print huge volumes of books at one time, store them and depreciate the unsold books over time. That was the most feasible way to print low volume books, such as textbooks or rarely printed books. Carter killed that, causing book prices to skyrocket.
Another result of liberal leadership.
Publishing companies give a portion of proceeds to the college. Crony capitalism at its best. /s
that doesn’t really work for science books or applied science books. those texts become reference books you sometimes refer to in your career, and it’s much easier to have a bunch of textbooks open at a desk than multiple PDF files on your computer when working through tough engineering or math problems. i’m glad i went to school before laptop computers when you had to take hand written notes in lecture.
Exactly my point!
I was paying my own way through graduate school in the early 1980’s and foreign students who were on free rides from their governments or companies would buy their international textbooks in Hong Kong or Singapore and pay 1/4 to 1/3 of what I had to pay. The internet has made those editions available to American students-thank goodness.
I made sure to buy them all used, because I'll be damned if those tenured seditionists get a "red" cent from me.
“When you can convince 18-year old airheads to take on massive debt in the form of student loans to buy your product, the sky is the limit.”
And only dopes and the very wealthy actually pay the “full price”. When the product that you are selling is subsidized by others, what incentive do you have to keep the price down?
Hmmm...sounds a lot like...the health care industry.
We rent most of our books, now, it’s the cheapest option. It is still VERY expensive though - usually $70 to RENT for one semester. What a racket.
I don't know where you get a premium candy bar for 58 cents. I just got back from the store. They are $1.29 each.
The Fluid Dynamics textbook that our Mechanical Engineering department had us buying was awkward at best, so when I was solving problems from it, I would submit them to the professor, solved with references to equations in my old man’s Fluid Dynamics engineering text. Oh BOY did that piss off the professor... who happened to be my advisor and Mechanical Engineering Dept. head.
Indeed it is a racket. The biggest racket is if the instructor requires a CD for the course and the only way you can obtain the CD and the code to use it, is to buy a NEW
textbook.
Rather than mandatory textbook possesion/education access... read that same sentence above in the context of healthcare services/health insurance coverage... and get back to me when we can use the SEC against 0bamacare.
They were bigger in 1977.
Nice try.
Doesn't matter. The price quoted to you was the price per ounce. Ounces were the same size in 1977.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.