The Cost Of College Textbooks

Specific Purpose Statement: To persuade my audience to take a stand and change how expensive purchasing textbooks are at Colorado State University.

If I were organizing a group of students to pressure lawmakers and textbook companies to reduce the cost of college textbooks, I would use purposive benefits as an incentive to get students to join my group. According to the textbook, informational benefits are “special newsletters, periodicals, training programs, conferences, and other information provided to members of groups to entice others to join” (444) and purposive benefits are “selective benefits of group membership that emphasize the purpose and accomplishments of the group” (445). The specific benefits I would offer the students would be purposive and informational benefits because it will allow the students to participate in public affairs and protest freely and get legal help from

Research indicates a steep upward trend in the cost of higher education throughout the 20th century. In recent decades, America has witnessed a widening gap between inflation and tuition. An incoming freshman at a typical college incurs charges for tuition, university fees, books, room and board,

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.

College cost more money each year and will continue to rise in price needed and textbooks will do the same. Private student loan debt is a perfect example of this it was on the rise, $6.2 billion was borrowed in 2012-2013, up from $5.5 billion from2011-2012. In

Bill: S.2176 — 114th Congress (2015-2016). A Bill used to expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve higher savings for students and help those who cannot pay for their books. The sponsor is Senator Durbin, Richard [D-IL] (Introduced 10/08/2015) By Mr. DURBIN (for himself, Mr. FRANKEN, and Mr. KING: The Committees are Senate - Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The Latest Action is on 10/08/2015 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. (Text of measure as introduced: CR S7276-7277). OPEN TEXTBOOK: —The term ‘‘open textbook’’ means an open educational resource or the set of open educational resources that either is a textbook or can be used in place of a textbook for a post-secondary course at an institution of higher education. This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Affordable College Textbook Act’’. “Affordable College Textbook act of S.2176- 114 Congress (2015-2016) was introduced on 10/08/2015 by Senator Durbin, Richard, assistant Democratic leader and was committed from Senate-Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The latest action was on 10/ 08/2015, read twice and referred to be committee on health, education, labor and pension. Text measure as introduced by CR S7276-7277, which later officially re-titles as a bill to expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.

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.

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.

Traci was sad that she was going to lose points and sad that she was unable to buy a textbook. She is a hardworking student. She wants to do well in school and get A’s in all subjects. In order for that to happen, in Tyler Junior College, the Library should have a minimum of 5 copies of each reserve textbook that should be available to students like Traci to use, because textbooks are expensive to buy or to rent. There is a long wait to get a book, and at present, there are not enough reserve text books available.

With a rise in the cost of tuition, college students must consider the possibility of alternative sources of funding to stay afloat through their degree programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, textbook prices have skyrocketed by eighty-two percent in the last decade.

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

`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

The seller of digital textbooks will also be saving money over producing hard copies. 32% of the cost allocated to paper, printing and editorial can be completely eliminated along with 22.4% of costs related to bookstore operations and personnel. Bookstores as we know them could become obsolete or transformed into stores that sell tablets, e-readers and software packages on campus. Publishers or sellers will now be able to tap into a more global market with electronic textbooks as the information can be translated into many languages quickly.

Some may think that the only customers of textbooks are the students but that is not the case. There are a variety of customers that buy the textbook before it even reaches the student, someone has to decide what textbook the students are going to be using for which particular course. Business school curricula is changing and therefore their textbooks needs are changing, they want textbooks that cover a variety of information and data in one single, easy to transport textbook. Some school that were moving the modular course structures wanted books that were easy to cover in a course that lasts sometimes as short as a week long. And now, more and