To appreciate how expensive higher education has become, wander the textbook aisles of University Campus Store, where required reading is often priced north of %26#36;100, and that’s for the soft-cover editions.
“It’s extremely expensive. It’s hard on top of tuition,” said University of Utah student Jayne Herrscher, a junior majoring in human development, as she handed over her Visa card for a %26#36;370 purchase Thursday. She estimated she will spend %26#36;450 this semester on books, despite sharing one expensive book with a fellow student.
Textbook costs have risen 6 percent a year, more than double the pace of inflation, since the mid-1980s, exacerbating the college affordability crisis brought on by surging tuition. According to a 2005 Government Accountability Office report, textbooks cost three times more in 2004 than they did in 1986.
Expressed as a percentage of the tuition at a four-year public institution, average students’ book costs are 26 percent of what they pay to attend school. An estimate by the Public Interest Research Group claims U.S. college students spend %26#36;900 a year on average.
The GAO report blamed rising textbook costs on the proliferation of frequent new editions and supplements, such as the ones packaged with Herrscher’s most expensive purchase.
The music textbook Jazz Styles, priced at %26#36;169, was shrink-wrapped with
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additional materials. Such “bundled” editions not only cost more, but also render the book worthless on the used market and impossible to return to the store if the materials have been unwrapped.
Critics say greed motivates the frequent releases of “revised” editions, which greatly undermine the market for used books and force professors to revise their syllabuses and lecture materials frequently. But industry representatives say the problem is not as severe as critics allege.
“College textbooks are incredibly expensive to produce and the market is tiny,” says Bruce Hildebrand, vice president for higher education at Association of American Publishers. “Used books are the single largest driver of textbook prices. Publishers have to recoup their cost of production.”
To help fight high book prices, the U.’s Campus Store works harder than most college stores to obtain used books. As a result, 46 percent of its inventory is used, far ahead of the national average of 27 percent.
“We’re aggressively getting requisitions in early from professors. The sooner we get the requisitions, the more likely we will find a source of used books,” store manager Shane Gorton says.
The store also launched a “guaranteed buy-back” program of selected books - as long as professors guarantee to teach from the book for at least three years - regardless of the release of revised edition, says the store’s textbook manager, Holly Fletcher.
One of the books to be included in the buy-back program is Mass Media Law by the University of Washington’s Don Pember.
“When I came here 16 years ago, Pember was under %26#36;50 in hard cover, then they went to paperback to reduce the cost. Now it’s over %26#36;100,” says David Vergobbi, a U. communication professor who finds this book indispensable for his media law course.
To address the ever-changing law associated with mass communications, McGraw-Hill revises Pember, now in its 15th edition, every other year. Under the bookstore’s program, a student can count on receiving 50 percent of the book’s new price at the end of the semester for the next three years.
“If I can do something to ease some of the burden, I’m all behind it,” Vergobbi says. “That’s why in some classes I am going toward not using books.”
The publishing industry makes 7 cents (after taxes) per dollar spent on new college textbooks, says an analysis by the National Association of College Stores, while the author makes 11.6 cents and production costs eat up 32.1 cents.
The %26#36;1.7 billion used book market is so efficient it outsells new books by volume, contends industry spokesman Hildebrand, and “the publisher and the author don’t see a penny of it.”
“Today’s textbook is a highly sophisticated learning tool,” Hildebrand says. “It combines printed material and sophisticated technology and digital materials. It can’t be compared with textbooks of old.”
Hildebrand says the industry produces an incredibly diverse array of textbooks, featuring 262,000 titles currently in print from 4,500 publishers - although the market is dominated by a handful of players. For introductory psychology, for example, college professors have 200 titles to choose from, priced between %26#36;23 and %26#36;120.
“No one is talking about value to students’ learning. Publishers are making an incredible investment to meet the requests of faculty,” Hildebrand says. “Faculty goes to the more expensive books because they are more highly illustrated. If the students use these materials, they have a greater chance of passing.”
bmaffly@sltrib.com amp,higher education,new books
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