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 ...
This is one of the biggest scams going.
The education-industrial complex
We had to record lectures 20 years before that when they ran out of textbooks for some science class. That meant I could sleep during that 7:30 AM class and review the tape later!
One of my math professors allowed older versions of the “required” book. He said he had intended to write/publish a math text book for the sole purpose of sticking with that particular edition every year until he was told he would have to periodically “update” with new editions.
The one thing my students do get out of the standard textbook publishing model is that it makes for a good example in my class on basic economics.
I payed $65 for a used construction book then which was a fortune. That is about what I got paid for wages my first month in the Army.
Infusing “Higher Education” with a butt-load of government money did NOT make it cheaper and more accessible.
It simply made the beast more ravenous.
Every professor’s dream is to write his own textbook and force several generations of students to but it.
Many economics and accounting textbooks sell for $250 at the very least. My solution: tell students to buy from Amazon-plenty of used books there. Also, college bookstores are now renting out textbooks by the semester or year.
It has changed now with the internet, but many popular textbooks had international editions. Same as the US edition but usually in paperback and half the price of the US edition. However, college bookstores refused to sell the international editions.
A couple years ago, I taught a managerial accounting course.
The new edition was $250.00. The previous edition on Amazon was $30.00. I told my students to purchase the older edition. The students were not accounting majors and the older edition, 2012 textbook was just perfect for them.
Ok, that is just beyond absurd for something like that to exist, and sound absolutely illegal.
There are many consumers, and the classic texts are used by everyone. The real problem is the racket to artificially keep the market supply small by issuing a "new edition" that is simply a rearrangement of chapters, or few new problems, or the addition of some supplemental material.
The current "classic" text in Calculus, Calculus by Stewart -- which is not really even all that good of a book -- has issued three successive editions where the only changes have been to the problem sets. Ridiculous.
And I suspect the resale market is rather limited for that textbook.
That’s illegal. Not even a private institution can make that kind of condition. It’s considered an anti-competitive practice by the SEC to require the purchase of a specific product casually unrelated to the product being sold. I’d talk to a lawyer about class action. Lots of money to be made if it’s true.
Too bad they don’t protest the price of tuition & books.
So has the price of a candy bar.
“College Textbook Prices Have Risen 1,041%”
Except in the end of semester buyback line.
my engineering textbooks were creeping up to the $100 mark back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. i’d hate to see what they cost now. Kluwer Academic Publishers books always seemed to be the thinnest and most pricey. used a bunch of those in grad school.
school textbooks are a scam though. the professors assign their own books (that they’ve written) and require that you buy those books. definite conflict of interest there. had that happen numerous times. also, the same class taught in different semesters by different profs often used different books or different revisions of books.
the same thing happens in public schools, only the taxpayer picks up the tab. schools choose new textbooks every year or two and those all need to be purchased... even when the previous textbook was perfectly adequate.
Likely because fiction is harder to write.
Unreal. If you fork out for the class, it shouldn’t matter. Pass or fail should be up to the attendee.
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