 "Photo: Ryan Joyce")
Economics: $124. Biology: $159. Calculus: $87. The sight of students fainting when they get their textbook receipt: priceless.
For students at Boston College and universities around the country, high textbook prices are an unwelcome burden on top of tuition, room and board, and incidentals. Unfortunately, the problem is only getting worse. According to Make Textbooks Affordable (MTA), a campaign launched by the Student Public Interest Research Groups, college students spend about $900 a year on textbooks and prices have risen by more than four times the inflation rate since 1994.
MTA offered several possible explanations for this disproportionate increase. Publishing companies are coming out with new editions of textbooks more frequently. These editions are more expensive and render older editions obsolete, but contain few significant content changes. A MTA study found that 76 percent of professors felt revisions were justified only "half the time or less."
Companies are also packaging CD-ROMs and workbooks with their textbooks to increase the price, but often times professors and students do not utilize these supplements. Bundled textbooks are also harder to sell back to bookstores because many do not accept books with missing CDs or used online passwords.
Some BC students blamed the Bookstore. "They're definitely overpriced because you can get them off Amazon for much cheaper," said Emily Krol, A&S '08. Krol spent $200 on books this semester, which she says is low because she is only taking four courses.
Krol said the Bookstore is often more convenient for students because they can get their books for the first day of class. "The Bookstore capitalizes on them," said Krol. She believes it will take student activism to bring about significant change.
"I feel like we should get a discount. I feel like the college is like a business and their main goal is to make a profit off us," said Disha Robinson, A&S '11.
Robinson spent around $300-400 on textbooks this semester, but she said she would have spent more if a few of her books had not carried over from last semester. She said that the University should factor discounts into its budget.
Such criticism has prompted Congress to take action. On Feb. 7, the House of Representatives passed the College Opportunity and Affordability Act in an effort to control prices.
The bill has three major provisions. First, publishers will be required to disclose the wholesale price and major content revisions to faculty. Second, they will also have to unbundle supplementary material from textbooks. Finally, colleges will need to list required and recommended books in course catalogs so students know the cost up front and have time to shop for better prices.
The bill, however, has its skeptics. Publishers argue these new requirements will only drive up their costs and make textbooks more expensive.
Colleges are also worried about driving up costs. In addition, the National Association for College Stores points out that many schools publish course catalogs before faculty pick their textbooks, thus making it infeasible to list required materials.
Tom McKenna, BC Bookstore Director, echoed these sentiments. "I don't believe that legislation designed to place additional requirements on publishers will bring down textbook prices. If I had to guess, I'd say the publishers would pass along any new costs required by any legislation right on to their customers."
There are also concerns that lists would deter students from taking nursing and science courses because of high textbook costs. "I get the best of both worlds," said Kristina Cotter, a bio-chemistry major and A&S '11. "Each of my science books is $150, if not more."
Cotter's biology book was particularly expensive because the Bookstore only had new copies. She said she would not switch majors because of textbook costs, however. "Next year I'll probably just look online," she said.
McKenna said the BC Bookstore sets its prices based on an industry standard.
The wholesale price it gets from publishers is nonnegotiable, so it has little control over prices. Some college bookstores now add an additional freight charge for textbook bundles, but BC does not.
"We are fair in our pricing policies for textbooks and work towards reducing textbook costs by having a strong used-textbook program. The best way to reduce textbook costs for students is to sell back your books at semester's end," McKenna said.
McKenna encouraged faculty to submit their textbook orders by Oct. 15 and April 15th so the Bookstore can pay students more for books that have been ordered.
Incidentally, used book markets may be the ultimate culprit. In a column written in The Academic Observer by Washington University in St. Louis, professor Henry Roediger III blamed the online used-book market for cutting into publisher profits and author royalties.
"The same text might be used by three to four students, but the textbook company and author profit the first time a book is sold and not thereafter. It stands to reason that textbooks must be priced aggressively, because the profits from the repeated sales will not go to the authors and companies that actually wrote and produced the books," Roediger wrote. Frequent revisions are another tactic to try to make used books obsolete.
McKenna agreed. "I do believe that the used-book program has played a role in driving up textbook prices. The more publishers raise the price, then the more attractive the book is as a used textbook. It becomes a cycle."
Aside from Amazon.com and used books, students, faculty, and colleges have tried several creative ways to ease the burden of textbooks.
Professor Susan Mattis of the College of Arts and Sciences honors program will sometimes photocopy pages for her students for a few dollars instead of requiring them to buy the entire book.
"We're only reading small portions so cost would've been quite prohibitive," she said. Mattis does not allow price to dictate which books she requires for her students, but because many of her books are works of literature published by several companies, she goes with the cheaper edition unless there was a "strong reason" not to.
Several schools in the University of Wisconsin system use a textbook rental system. Students pay $130 to $240 each year to rent out their textbooks and return them each semester.
While it is a lot cheaper than buying new or used textbooks, students cannot highlight or mark rented books and face fines for late or damaged books.
McKenna said that BC has explored rental programs in the past, but found it then unfeasible.
He pointed out that most schools with rental programs are large public schools with lots of students taking the same classes, and even then the economic benefits are unclear. "Most importantly, rental programs require faculty to make a two- or three-year commitment to one book," he said.
Solving the problem is all the more complicated by the strange economics of the textbook industry.
The textbook market is unique in that the consumer's purchasing decision is dictated by a third party - the faculty.
Professor Darren Kisgen of the finance department said he does not take price into consideration when choosing a textbook. "I focus entirely on the quality of the text," he said.
Kisgen does empathize with his students but he does not see this as a new phenomenon. "I thought they were pretty expensive when I was in college as well," he said. I think it's a burden on students in any generation."
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