Students from California to Maine are feeling the pinch of the increasing cost of education and that includes everything from tuition to textbooks. While the rising cost of tuition stands in the spotlight every year, the rising cost of textbooks has largely been ignored, until now. The California Public Interest Research Group’s (Calpirg) released a report titled “Rip-off 101: How the Current Practices of The Textbook Industry Drive Up The Cost of College Textbooks.” There has been speculation about the accuracy of its contents, but the buzz it has created cannot be disputed. The college textbook market is in the spotlight and publishers are being held accountable for their practices.
Below is a summary of Calpirg’s major claims compared with what The Free Press discovered in its own investigation.
Calpirg surveyed 156 faculty and 521 students at different public California universities about textbooks costs and their buying habits.
New Editions
*FP: Bookstores maintain their used book stock by introducing new books into rotation as needed. Before looking to publishers for new books, the stores exhaust their used book resources. This means first hosting the buyback process for students and then scrambling to wholesalers to scrape together as many used books as are available.
When a publisher decides it is time for a new edition, they simultaneously discontinue printing the old edition. Stock of the old edition dwindles and professors are forced to order the new edition. In turn, the students, rather than have the option to buy used or new books, are forced to pay full price because only new editions are available. The National Association of College Stores (NACS) research says used books typically cost 25 percent less than new books. Both USM Bookstore (University owned) and the Campus Bookstore (privately owned), are members of NACS.
This practice is perhaps the most controversial in the textbook debate. Publishers release new editions in rarely-changing disciplines like calculus and statistics nearly as often as they do for more dynamic subjects like political science. Thomson Higher Education, one of the largest publishers of textbooks, has attempted to justify releasing new editions. “If there wasn’t market demand for what we provide,” said Adam Gaber, spokesperson for Thomson, “we wouldn’t provide it.”
USM Professor of Psychology Bill Thornton disagrees. He says there is not much reason to continually release new editions, at least not for statistics. “The only reason they come out with a new text is because of the used book market,” he said. “For stats, nothing is going to change. ‘Let’s split this up into two paragraphs, let’s use a new example here.’ The concepts aren’t going to change.”
Wayne Diffin, owner of the Campus Bookstore, agrees that new editions are a ploy to circumvent the used book market.
“There’s a big publisher game to try and drive my type of operation out of business. The students are the ones getting hosed.”
In the past two years, used book sales declined while new books sales increased. (See chart)
*Calpirg: Seventy-six percent of faculty said new editions are justified “never” to “half the time.” On average Calpirg found a new textbook costs $102.44, where a used text costs $64.80. They also found that new editions are released every three and half years on average.
Foreign Market
*FP: The foreign market is posing a threat to American textbook sellers. Students now have the opportunity to purchase books online from a foreign distributor at a cheaper rate than in the U.S. stores. This is possible because publishers sell texts cheaper overseas. Publishers say they offer texts for less overseas because they price texts according to individual markets.
For the student, it is an alternative to paying the increasing prices in the states. Still, NACS stores are fighting this practice. NACS finds that only 3.5 percent of students shop online for their books.
A student can hop online and access the same textbooks in another country at sometimes half of what they would pay in the U.S. Other students have formed their own online trading site called campusbookswap.com. Half.com (affiliated with ebay) is a site offering texts at reduced rates as well.
Campus Bookstore owner Diffin is frustrated because “publishers sell textbooks dirt cheap overseas.”
NACS stores, as well as the wholesalers who supply NACS stores with used books, refuse to buy back textbooks purchased overseas. These books are easily identified through a tag system publishers use to differentiate the foreign market. NACS stores, as policy, do not buy books at reduced prices from overseas to offer at reduced prices to students.
NACS has had ongoing discussions regarding this practice with the AAP since April 2002. This practice alone does not damage the U.S. market. It is the eventual reimportation of many of these texts at much lower prices than a campus store can offer that damages the market.
*Calpirg: A new Calculus text in Britain sold for $60 where in the U.S. the same text was sold for $120.
Rising Prices
*FP: Colleen White, associate director of the USM Bookstore, is aware of the problem increasing costs pose to students. “Prices are going up and going up and going up–a lot,” she said.
Declining to specify names, she said that some larger publishers raise prices directly before new semesters start (ie. July and November). Larger companies, she said, tend to increase prices more frequently than smaller university presses, and the most noticeable increases happen before a new edition is released.
The College Board, an organization that tracks yearly college costs found that the average student spent between $727 and $807 on textbooks and other reference materials in 2002-2003. There is an average increase in spending by 3.5 percent each year, according to The Student Monitor an independent marketing firm respected by NACS and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) alike.
*Calpirg: Students will spend an average of $898 on textbooks this school year.
Bundling
FP: “Bundling” is another controversial practice. Many texts are packaged with CD-ROMs, study guides and other materials.
Publishers say they are giving professors and students what they want. AAP Responding to complaints that this drives prices up, President Pat Schroeder wrote a letter insisting that American professors require these materials, which is why they produce them. “You attack the practice of assembling customized instructional materials with textbooks, and yet a substantial number of faculty members tell us that is exactly what they want.”
Whether or not professors desire or even request these materials, they often receive them anyway. White said it is not uncommon for her to order a plain text (by professor request) but receive a text with an extra such as a “free” CD-ROM.
When these un-requested “free” CD’s and other materials are included, the question arises, ‘who is picking up the tab on this stuff?’ The cost must be covered somewhere along the way whether the student or the publisher pays.
NACS estimates that bundles compose 10 percent to 20 percent of the average stores’ inventory. The use of bundles is increasing yearly and is expected to continue increasing.
*Calpirg: Half of all textbooks come “bundled.” They also claim the cost of these “bundles” is twice as much as a textbook alone.
Since Calpirg’s report was released there has been a response in Congress. Legislators have requested an investigation of publisher’s pricing practices.
Christy McKinnon can be contacted at [email protected]