College Textbooks: A Case Study

According to an article titled (“College textbook costs more outrageous than ever” from today.com by Herb Weisbaum), the College Board “estimates that the average student in this country now spends around $1,200 a year on books and supplies. A single book can cost as much as $200”.

Each year, college tuition increases more and more, which makes getting a higher education almost impossible for some people. According to Pay it forward written by Catherine Morris tuitions and fees at public four-year institutions has been increasing an average of 3.4 percent each year between 2005 and 2015.

Attention-getter: How much money have you spent just this year alone on college? Hold on now, did you include all the fees? Living expenses? Your meal plan? Obvioulsy the answer is going to be in the upwards of thousands of dollars. Depressing, I know! College should be a time where you are truly discovering who you are and what you want to do with your life. It shouldn’t be about how you’re slowly but surely giving your life away to student loans. Oh yes, student loans, the mortal enemy of any college student. The college tuition alone is already high enough to put you in debt with student loans for a majority of your life. There are many things that factor into the price of a college education, some reasonable, others however, are a different story. Today, I want to talk to you about the scam that is going on concerning the price of college textbooks. An interesting statistic by The Huffington Post tells us that the cost of college textbooks has increased 253% faster than the cost of college tuition over the decade. How come college textbooks are so expensive? And what can we do to stop this? Well let’s get into it shall we.

I. ATTENTION GETTER: Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School mentioned in The New York Times how textbooks and school supplies account to 26% of all student fees in State Universities and in Junior colleges it is about a 72%. Just how much money do we have to put in textbooks in order to get an education.

The price of college can be extremely overwhelming to incoming students. Many students take the student loan route, as in the 2012-2013 school year, around 10 million college students took out a loan for college, meaning lots of debt. $1.3 trillion to be exact. It’s 39% higher than it was 4 years ago, and like what was said earlier, there is no sign of the price of college going down anytime soon.

In response to Mr. Caldwell’s essay, I agree that the cost of college education is exorbitant. First, the cost of books alone can be several hundred dollars not including additional codes and materials to access online materials. There are several hidden fees such as parking, student IDs and other various miscellaneous items. Secondly, it seems as though some instructors have little interest in teaching. Instead they have canned responses and make little effort to interact. Rather than feeling as though you are participating

The cost of college books has tripled in the last 10 years, costing an average of $200 dollars (NIA). College 's will publish their own books, require students to buy them, then update or revise them every year to make the book obsolete causing students to have to by new one 's every year and making the resale of them, nonexistent! College 's will work with publishers and recieve kick backs for using books they publish. Adminstation for college also feel the advantage of higher tuition rates. The president of Yale salary has tripled from $591,709 in 2000, to 1.63 million in 2009.(5) With the average cost of graduating at a 4 year college at $27,293 a year, it is easy to see who is truly profitting from an attending and/or graduated student. Colleges are captializing of students in a poor economy and once out of college, their is no guarentee employment will be waiting.

Colleges are raising tuition for a variety of reasons. Some colleges think that spending millions and millions of dollars on recreational activities to make the college more appealing to students is worth raising the tuition, while others give their administration and college presidents a big salary. Because there are so many factors that go into a college tuition and fees, many students do not actually think about where all of their money is going. If students were to look at what is taking their money, they might think twice about going to that

Researchers found that with all these expenses, colleges are not spending roughly the same amount of money resulting in the rise of tuition cost. For example at public research Universities, spending increased close to three thousand dollars per full-time students (Matthew, 2013).

For decades, the options of renting apartments, cars, and movies. Renting allows the person in mind to enjoy goods while they need them and return them when they are no longer useful. However, can renting textbooks actually be worth it for students?

Ethan Senack, a higher education associate at U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group), wrote in his article titled, “Fixing The Broken Textbook Market: How Students Respond To High Textbook Cost And Demand Alternatives.” Whereas, he suggest that the problems associated with high pricing on textbooks, has nothing to do with the student. However, he feels that the students would be the most effective in seeking lower prices for textbooks. He gave several examples of colleges that are overcoming this barrier. One successful example he used was Maryland Open-Source Textbook (MOST). The university staff, professors and students worked together to generate ideas to reduce the cost of textbooks, using the use of open textbooks (16).

One of the main reasons why college textbooks are so expensive is because they are overpriced. The publishers set the prices. The bookstore has no control. The publishers of the textbooks are in the habit of bringing new editions quite frequently. Most students hesitate to buy old editions fearing that they will miss out on

Why should students pay millions in textbooks if they’re already paying millions in tuition money just for classes and money? Students should know that they are being forced into this textbook monopoly. There for we need to enforce a plan to change the way this scam is working. There should be a easer access to books rather than spending their life savings on these books. Students are being taken advantage by local bookstores that supplies for college like textbooks. By saying that oh this textbook will help you succeed. In the nature of it that extra textbook costs you hundreds and you wont even use it in class.

Students should not have to worry about textbooks on top of everything else going on in life. Purchasing and reselling textbooks should be easy, quick, and stress free. I’d like to state here that my goal is to not eliminate textbooks or make them free for every student attending the University of Oregon. My goal is to have students spend a significant amount less on textbooks over the course of their academic careers here at the University of Oregon. I am aware I cannot magically decrease the price of textbooks. However, there could be ways to decrease the overall spending on textbooks for students as the current issues could easily be resolved.

`One reason college textbooks should be free is because how expensive they are. The price of a college textbook can start at a hundred dollars. Most students are required to have a few textbooks each semester. So the prices of each textbook will add up and may cost over a few hundred