Big Spender

Screen shot 2015-10-15 at 7.14.02 PM

By: Alvin Wilson 
Freelancer

There’s no question that college is expensive.

With course fees, building fees, tuition and the cost of living while attending college all quickly rising, any additional expenses can be too much for some students.

Textbooks play an essential role in almost every class, and every student knows how expensive they can be.

“In my second year I bought an Anatomy and Physiology textbook that was $300,” Jessica Arreola, a junior education major, said. “It makes me angry because some books are almost as expensive as tuition for a class.”

On the shelves of Western’s bookstore sit at least three books that cost more than $300, and many more in the $200 range. But textbooks haven’t always been so expensive.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, textbook prices have increased by 1,041 percent since 1977.

How can publishers justify charging students so much for one book?

Western professor of economics Dr. John Leadley tried to explain our current situation.

“If there’s lots of choices out there for the professors, it would be hard to raise your prices significantly,” Leadley said. “I would just say, ‘that book is too expensive for my students, I will pick this one instead.’”

“The problem is that there was a lot of consolidation, or mergers, in the textbook publishing industry — in fact, the publishing industry in general.”

These mergers reduced competition in the textbook industry and allowed publishers to raise their prices without fear.

Some colleges around the country have started introducing money-saving options for students, recognizing how difficult it is for students to afford some textbooks.

By allowing its instructors to write and produce their own textbooks, Chemeketa Community College in Salem is saving its students an average of $97 per year.

But if textbooks don’t become more affordable, Leadley said it will discourage students from buying their books. And he’s right.

According to a study performed in 2013 by the Student Public Interest Research Groups (SPIRG), 65 percent of students from 150 campuses across the U.S. had decided against buying a textbook because of high costs.

Arreola admitted that she was among the 65 percent of students who decided to skip buying a book.
“Actually, for this term I had to put off buying one of my textbooks because it was out of my price range. My financial aid didn’t help very much this term,” she said.

Leadley believes professors should be as concerned by this as students are.

“Why should anybody care? Because my students stop buying the book,” he said. “Faculty really should care, because if students aren’t buying the book then what’s the point in having a book?”

However, rising prices and an increase in secondhand textbook use is beginning to have an effect on big publishers.

Western’s bookstore claims that their book rental program has saved students over one million dollars since 2010, and more students are turning to third-party sellers.

Because of book rentals and third-party sellers, students are paying less for textbooks now than they were in 2007, according to the National Association of College Stores.

While this is good for students, it’s not so great for big publishers.

McGraw-Hill, major American book publisher, reported that 71 percent of their higher-ed revenue came from new printed textbooks in 2010. In 2013, just three years later, that number dropped to 38 percent.
Will this decrease in revenue persuade publishers to decrease their prices?

“You raise the price, you lose some customers,” Leadley said. “The question is: did you raise the price enough to offset the loss in the number of customers?”

Leadley believes publishers won’t be affected enough to significantly lower their prices.

“They wouldn’t be doing it if their marketing people weren’t telling them, ‘yeah, we’re going to lose some, but we’re still going to get more revenue.”

Arreola hopes publishers will be prompted to lower their prices. If she didn’t have to pay so much for books, she said she would spend more money on food and other essential things.

“I also spend a lot of money on gas because I commute from Salem,” she said, “so that money would probably go toward getting to campus or surviving.”