Cooking the books

By: Robert Patton Critic Staff

Posted: 2/5/10

We all know textbooks can be very expensive. It's not unusual for a single required text to cost over $200. Now head down to your nearest Borders store and try to find a $200 book. Why should a textbook cost several times what a trade book costs?

The textbook people tell us that their products are expensive to produce. Instead of single starving authors their books are created by teams of highly trained PhDs. And a textbook's sales are limited to students in classes that require that particular text. Then too, there's the matter of expensive artwork ranging from charts and graphs to color photographs. Finally students demand information that is cutting edge-right up to the minute.

Now, if you believe all that, there's a bridge in Brooklyn that may interest you.

Textbooks are sold to a captive market, to students that are required to read the book by their professors. If students had to pull out their wallets and purses to pay for overpriced books they would almost certainly rebel. But most textbooks are purchased with student loan funds. Of course those bills must be paid in the long run, but what alternative does the average student have? Required books can be purchased on the Internet for far less than college bookstore prices, but Amazon does not accept funds from student accounts.

Older editions of required texts are often available at pennies on the dollar. How much does the subject of English literature change in two or three years? How about algebra, physics, European history, acting, or journalism? Are those older textbooks full of hopelessly out-of-date content? But older editions are not available in college bookstores and online textbook sellers don't accept payment from student accounts.

Every so often, a professor will suggest that an older edition will work for his or her course. But the textbook companies work hard to keep this to a minimum. Textbook publishers have developed a whole bag of tricks to sell their wares at outrageous prices. They provide free copies of texts to teachers and provide all kinds of supplementary materials to make the job of a teacher easier. Naturally all supplementary materials are tied to the latest edition of a text. They can't make enough money if the same textbook is used year after year. This can happen to a limited extent with used textbooks, but then out comes the new edition and the old one is pronounced dead.

Have you ever wondered how college students in third-world countries can afford expensive textbooks? They can't and they don't. In many cases they use the same textbooks as American students. Take Thailand's leading university, for example. Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok has a bookstore that sells many American textbooks. But a text that sells in America for $125 or more may cost less than $50 in Bangkok.

The Asian edition may be a paperback, using cheaper paper and black-and-white illustrations, but how many American students would choose to pay an extra $75 for 4-color process, hard covers, and archive quality paper. But that choice is not available. Open the Asian edition and you will find a strongly worded warning that the text is not to be sold outside of Southeast Asia.

With the country in a recession, with good paying jobs for graduates getting scarcer, with tuition costs going through the roof, isn't it time for college administrators, professors, and book stores to work with students to bring textbook prices down to a reasonable level? If a slightly older edition will do the job, professors should recommend them, and college bookstores should carry them. If paperback editions on cheaper paper with monochrome illustrations meet educational standards, insist that publishers offer them.

Isn't it time to stop cooking the books at student expense?