OT: the price of an education

[TelegramSam]

If I sell a book I spent, say $80 for back to the bookstore, I might get $15 for it. You know what they'll sell that used book for the next semester? $65-75. You're screwed either way, unless you have a friend who took the same course the last semester and will sell you theirs, but thus far I've only been able to do that twice since I've been a student.

Yah know, I'm really surprised some interprising students haven't set up a book swap/resale website... I think if I was in your shoes I would.

A lot of the frats/sororities have, but I don't have a member's card. I basically just write lists of what I have and what I want for them and tape them to the walls around my dorm. Occasionally, I'll sell something.

[Rando7]

Sort of makes you wonder we are willing to spend billions on arms, give huge tax cuts to those who do not need them. But we are not willing to invest in our children and give them a fee education.

Textbooks have been expensive as long as I can remember, regardless of tax rates or defense spending.

[cj]

Yes, it boggles the mind. When I was in college, sometimes the profs would change editions mid-year so that when you took a spring class, you couldn't even buy a used book off someone who took the class fall semester! That really bites.

[Caj]

Throughout college and grad school (which continues to the present date,) I only paid real money for a textbook if I considered it really important, i.e. academically significant. "Real money" was somewhere above 60-80 dollars.

I no longer take classes at this point; if I did, tho, I'd need a really good reason to spend more than $100 in supplies for one college-level class, and I wouldn't be afraid to tell the professor so, e.g. "If I have to pay that much money for the class's textbooks then I'm not buyin' them, unless they are so important that they should compete for space on my bookshelves for the rest of my life."

Then again, I don't think I ever got a 4.0.

Caj

[TelegramSam]

unfortunately, the ridiculously expensive book in question is for Chemistry, and I don't think I could get away without it (I certainly couldn't in high school chemistry anyhow) otherwise I wouldn't have bought the damn thing, <i>trust me</i>.

[Roger O'Keeffe]

Coincidentally I found this in an article in yesterday's Guardian newspaper:

A doctor working in Gondar hospital in Ethiopia wrote to me recently to spell out what this means. The hospital has none of the basic textbooks on tropical diseases it needs. But it does have 21 copies of an 800-page volume called Aesthetic Facial Surgery and 24 volumes of a book called Opthalmic Pathology. There is no opthalmic pathologist in training in Ethiopia. The poorest nation on Earth, unsurprisingly, has no aesthetic plastic surgeons. The US had spent $2m on medical textbooks that American publishers hadn't been able to sell at home, called them aid and dumped them in Ethiopia.

The article (full text here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 54,00.html
) is not a specifically anti-US rant, but it does suggest how academic publishers can shelter themselves from the market forces that the West is supposed to believe in.

[Wombat]

Lots of complaining here, I think justified. But not a single person has said what they think a text book ought to cost or why. So, let's have few figures with realistic costings, eh.

Before you answer, ask yourself how many text books actually turn a profit and how many cutting-edge academic publications by the same company each successful text book is required to subsidise. Don't tell me this stuff is irrelevant: no fundamental reasearch today, out of date text books in ten years time. Hardly any cutting edge research books turn a profit.

I publish in quite a large number of academic fields in journals and occasionally contribute chapters to books. I haven't seen a cent from any of this work, nor would I expect to. I also referee for several journals, again for nothing. If I ever publish a successful text book, I'll be drawing on this wealth of unpaid work done over half a lifetime. My labour isn't just the time and effort put into writing it. Sure, I get my teaching salary but it hardly campares with the salaries of professionals who put in a lot fewer years training: many medicos, engineers and lawyers for example.

That said, I do everything I can, within the law, to minimise the cost of texts for my students. Angry and persistent phone calls have led to $70 books being made available for $40. Also, copyright laws allow us to complile books of readings which we can sell for production cost—usually about $20. Subjects can be designed around these if you know what you are doing and can fill in the gaps yourself. But again, this is unpaid work on my part.

So, although I agree that texts do tend to be overpriced, I honestly don't know what they should cost. My question wasn't rhetorical.

[cyberspiff]

How much should textbooks cost? Good question with no real answer. Sorta like, how long should your legs be? Maybe something like 10% profit over costs of publishing? But that's so arbitrary it's almost silly.

I guess when you really think about it the market for textbooks in comparison to standard fiction or non-fiction sold at bookstores is limited. Now that I really look at it, books on almost any specific topic with a limited audience are in the same ballpark. Go look at the prices on computer or electronics books at a major bookstore. The prices are similar.

I don't think the numbers are just made up by someone. My kids have gone to 3 different colleges in 3 different states and textbook costs were almost identical.

[Wombat]

How much should textbooks cost? Good question with no real answer. Sorta like, how long should your legs be?

Exactly! So why is (almost) everybody so certain they are overpriced?

Actually, one reason I'm fairly certain is that the top academics rarely write the big selling text books, so the people who put in most work for least financial reward are not the ones who get the big royalty cheques.

[TelegramSam]

There's a big difference between mainstream novels and school books. The main thing being that I can decide whether or not I want to buy the newest John Grisham novel, but if I want to pass chemistry this semester, I don't have any choice in the matter on whether or not I buy the $190 chemistry textbook and lab book. I can't choose one text book over another (the professor decides which chemistry book is used, the students have no say), and I can't just check one out from the library for the whole semester. And they sell the bloody thing as a shrinkwrapped package with this silly computer disk of notes and study software and garbage inside that I guarantee you I WON'T use but no doubt is responsible for a large chunk of the price, but I don't have the option of buying it without it. It's the coercive nature of it that irks me more than the pricing.

[NicoMoreno]

I had one class so far where the professor who was teaching (actually a different section, not me... but still) the course had written the book for it. He told us the very first day that he would be donating all his profit to the University for each book we bought.

This is due to the Ethics bylaws/regulations at the University.

I'll let you guess, but I think you will be able to figure out where it is.

[fancypiper]

Back in 1958, my first year in college, textbook prices ran more than double the tuition, even when I found half of them used. The cheapest new book was $38 (Brinton, Cristopher and Wolf, A History of Civilization). Most of my classes had just changed textbooks which meant no used books were available.

[cyberspiff]

There's a big difference between mainstream novels and school books. The main thing being that I can decide whether or not I want to buy the newest John Grisham novel, but if I want to pass chemistry this semester, I don't have any choice in the matter on whether or not I buy the $190 chemistry textbook and lab book.

But that isn't the only difference that affects the price. For example, the Grisham novel will sell a million copies while the chemistry book might sell 10 thousand. When you spread things out over larger populations the profit is spread out.

It's a horrible situation for sure. You have to have to books in order to pass the class which the professor bases their lectures around (or maybe not), which the book publishers sell for higher prices due to the restricted market, and the book authors require a specific percentage of sales to cover their own costs.

[DCrom]

There is a certain element of truth in the "small market" comment - remember, the print run of a successful textbook has to be amortized by (typically) no more than a few thousand books (perhaps a few tens of thousands for a wildly popular book that remains in print for a long time).

However, in my field (Computers) a huge number of English-language textbooks are sold (full sized, but soft covers) in foreign markets for much less money than the US price - frex, colleagues from India have softcover versions of Steven's TCP/IP Illustrated, Vols 1-3 that cost $10-$15 dollars per volume - they got all three volumes for about half as much as I paid for EACH of the three volumes. Ditto for other books I have on my shelves like Tanenbaum's Operating Systems and Computer Networks texts.

It looks as if publishers, like drug companies, are amortizing all their research and production setup expenses here in the US and selling just above the additional-production price in the rest of the world.

[cyberspiff]

Are they printed legally in Asia though? I remember back when I was working for a computer company and met with some representatives from India. They were talking about a new software release that was not licensed to them. I management asking, "Where did you get your licenses?" They responded from their local sales rep who was having the documentation printed locally and selling licenses himself. When they were informed of this they said, "Who cares? We're in India, what are you going to do about it?" After management thought it through they decided that at least they weren't using the competition