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 ...
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.
Dude. You have to buy the textbook. It’s a scam, and it’s been running for a very long time. My pet peeve is when the prof tells you to buy the fourth edition when you have the third, and the only difference between them is a few words.
I see lots of book resellers at garage sales scooping up college textbooks because they can score some good returns if they are just one or 2 “editions” old.
It’s such a scam how students are bilked for those things. But when they pay with it from a “unlimited” bucket of cash, then why not take advantage of suckers?
Why not? Government issues blank checks for what they call education. It doesn’t even matter if most the students shouldn’t be anywhere near a four year college.
Professional books are even more expensive. A required textbook for our curriculum was $700 back in 1979. WB Saunders owned us.
Yeah, but you don’t know that it’s only a few words, unless you buy the fourth.
It is a scam. I think textbooks should be part of the tuition, and then the colleges would start managing the price of the book down. And using professors that teach from cheaper books.
Ipads and other tablets are readily available, can be updated instantly, and don’t require a personal U-haul backpack to lug around.
I’ve skirted by many times by just making audio recordings of the lectures (being 1997 this was no easy feat, kids), and fudging the rest the best I could by going to the school store and skimming the chapters while pretending to shop. It worked pretty well.
They’re still not worth what they were in 1960
If you know a bunch of people in class you could buy just one new edition for everyone to see version differences and to get its homework questions and then buy used ones for general learning.
I still have some college texts from ‘77 that show $2 but, of course, they were used. If I couldn’t get them used (several years used), I’d check them out of the univ library. Today’s texts can never be used again because students have to have a new computer disc to get into their prof’s website. It’s all a scam. Someone is getting kickbacks.
I remember spending under $100 for all my textbooks per semester back in the late 1970’s except for one neuroanatomy textbook that was $100 all by itself. Boy, did we complain about that.
Now, textbooks that should cost more than $25 cost well over $100. Then the kids have to buy access to some website to do homework online. Total rip off.
I try to use free e-books available through the school library or books that don’t change editions every year or two to try to save the kids some bucks, but sometimes I’m forced to use the book school has selected.
Biggest racket going.
Back in ‘77, I used a Bio I text that my mother had used decades before. The only thing that had changed was the pictures had been colorized.
Buy the book, quickly scan it, return it within the time window for full refund.
It’s a great thing the federal government intervened to keep college costs under control. Just imagine how bad it would be without central planning. Why, colleges would have to compete and consumers would be looking after their own money instead of groveling for more government “free” money.
College is bound to cost less when the government makes it totally free.
/s
I’ve had some classes where I barely needed the textbook.
I’m going to start buying used on the internet in the future.
“With high res cell phone cameras, I’m surprised that more students don’t just go into the bookstore and take pictures of every page... but then the bookstore would start keeping all the books in the backroom and only leave request cards on the shelves so you pay for it before you get the book. “
Actually if they see this happening the call the police and file charges for theft.
Where the price does not make any sense is when the class is studying something in the public domain. Why buy an edition of Plato or Wealth of Nations when you can read it online for free?
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