College students have complained for years about the high cost of textbooks they must buy for their classes. They're right: Textbooks are a rip-off. The publishers have a captive market, and they issue new editions every year or two, with higher prices, on the pretext of keeping the books "current."
It's more about "currency" than "current." These guys ought to be prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Students go to great lengths to save money. I once heard that some had discovered that buying the books from Amazon's United Kingdom Web site was cheaper than using Amazon's American site. Used book stores flourish because of this scam, but even their prices can go through the roof, and sometimes used copies simply aren't available.
State Sen. Elaine Corbett, D-San Leandro, has a bill that might make some modest improvements in the system. The bill would require publishers who make pitches to faculty for their books to disclose their wholesale and retail costs, make an estimate of how long the book will stay current and state how much they've jacked up the price of new editions over old ones. The San Bernardino Sun has a good story on the subject.
The legislation, Senate Bill 832, is on the governor's desk. He ought to sign it.
Some professors -- the ones who write the textbooks -- are in on the racket. Many others are upset, because they find that students who can't afford the textbooks don't do as well in classes.
The price of college textbooks has increased at nearly four times the rate of inflation in the past decade, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Many students -- or their parents -- now spend more than $1,000 a year for books. It's time for some changes.
this scam also extends to primary and high schools, where the districts are mandated to buy certain books,in enormous volumnes, at fixed prices, and often required to update so often that perfectly good books are being discarded by the millions.This, "whatever the market can bear" approach, clearly hasn't helped educate our youth. but rather, offers one more example of unchecked greed doing harm.
My soon to be ex wife and myself have been stopped from further education simply by the cost of books.
This is a field that could benefit by a lot of free market competition. At the very least open up the amount of low income programs for books