I smelled this bullshit firsthand when I was required to purchase the new, 7th Edition of a text on 18th Century Literature (because so much of 18th century literature has changed within the last year when the 6th edition had been published).
I grabbed a used 5th edition off of ebay and did just fine.
mmm
Actually, in many companies, the textbook division is doing just fine, and could turn a profit without any bullshit. The problem is that, in many of these massive publishing corporations, the textbook division is one of the ONLY profit centers, and is asked to carry a larger burden as a result, to make up for the shitty returns in other areas.
Also, leaving that aside, textbooks publishers face a somewhat unique situation, in that they publish books that are generally used for specialized purposes, for a limited period of time. Those books are also often purchased by people who have no further use for them afterwards, generating a disproportionately large number of available used copies. This, combined with the fact that new customers often don’t care if their copy of the textbook already has writing or highlighting in it, leads to a used book market that where demand is not very discriminating, in terms of the actual quality and condition of the product, and where demand for used copies can rapidly exceed the market for new copies of the book.
Anyone who reads knows that used books have always been around, and have always eaten (at least a little bit) into the market for new books, but it seems to me that the scale of the problem is significantly larger for textbooks. It’s also something that i’m not really sure would disappear, even if we could fix the principal-agent problem that you refer to in your post. Leaving aside the fact that letting students buy whatever text they wanted would make many classes impossible to teach, even if we were to do this, the market for used textbooks would still be disproportionately large, and the publishers would still try to find a way around this.
I think, in the longer run, that textbooks might move to being exclusively electronic, with updates simply incorporated into the electronic version, rather than requiring a printing of a completely new book. It could also be that they become rental-only, whereby you have access to the book only for the semester that you need it, and then your account expires unless you’re willing to pay up for another four months. This would (assuming you can protect the electronic versions from being copied and distributed) eliminate the used book market.
It’s worth noting that some of the stuff that textbook companies offer as supplemental materials, at least in my field, is pretty good stuff, and is stuff that you can’t really put into a hard copy of a book. Interactive maps and timelines, historical video clips, high-resolution images that show much greater detail than a book version, and a range of other materials. All of these can help students understand the subject better, but in many cases i can find or produce similar stuff for my students at no cost to them.
Isn’t it ultimately the prof who decides which textbooks to use? That’s where I’d lay the blame and where I’d begin to work for change. Perhaps the student union should demand that single use, code required text requirements be spelled out in the course catalogue so students could make informed choices and actively choose not to support such tactics?
Perhaps students need to be educated to the fact that there were alternatives that were passed over in favour of them getting fleeced. And maybe universities and colleges can open an inquiry into what incentives were offered to profs supporting this fleecing!
It seems to me spreading awareness could end this practice, but it would require someone like Mendo, with inside knowledge, to open the floodgates.
Some of what you want is already in place (at least in the U.S.). As of 2010,
Even further, in 2013, Senators Dick Durbin and Al Franken introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act, which
I don’t know what the current status of this bill is.
None of which prevents publishers from, and colleges from, emphasizing profitability, paying “placement” fees and seller royalties in one form or another, or just plain coercing/bribing/wheedling bookstores, faculty and colleges into carrying the most profitable options.
And, the bottom line is that most college students are on someone else’s nickel, don’t care, or have neither time nor inclination to do anything but whine about it a little until more pressing matters - like the start of classes - takes precedence. Especially in junior colleges. So it’s a largely uncontrolled loop that feeds at its limit and continually expands that limit.
Might be time to push back.
Yes it is, and i tend to agree.
Incentives? This is not the medical/pharmaceutical profession.
Those of us who teach at universities are not, to my knowledge, being offered cash kickbacks or golf clubs or trips to the Bahamas. Basically all i get if i decide to assign a particular textbook for my class is a free copy of the textbook for myself, and free access to things like test bank questions and lecture outlines, most of which i never use. I also insist on an extra free copy of the book that i can place on reserve in the library, so that students who don’t want to buy the book can still have access to it. And all of the publishers offer these things, so it doesn’t affect my choice at all.
The only “luxury” extra i’ve ever received from a textbook rep was to be taken (once only) to dinner at a nice restaurant, AFTER i agreed to pilot an online version of a textbook in my class. I agreed to do the pilot because it looked good, and knew nothing about the dinner until after agreeing to do it. But my students didn’t get screwed by this, because they all got the material for free as part of the pilot program. And i dropped the material the following semester because, while it was pretty good, it wasn’t quite what i was looking for.
Most of the publisher reps who visit me are very nice people, and are incredibly sympathetic to the financial struggles of our students, many of whom are from poor and working-class backgrounds, and who struggle with rising tuition costs and other expenses. In many cases, when they offer customized textbook options for our classes, the custom versions do actually save students money compared to the full versions, in terms of initial cost. But, as noted earlier, they are harder to resell later, which is why i avoid them. I also have adopted a policy where, if i change textbooks, i will use the new one for at least two years (four semesters), so that students have the opportunity to sell their old books to the next semester’s class.
All of this is in history, which is the subject i teach. I guess it’s possible that math and science and business and engineering professors are being offered large bribes or kickbacks to assign books, but in my experience that’s not how it works. And in cases where the student ends up getting screwed, i’m willing to bet that it’s often simply the result of thoughtlessness rather than malice on the part of the professor. Doesn’t make it any better for the student, of course, but i think you’re wrong if you believe that professors are consciously screwing their students in order to ride the textbook gravy train.
I didn’t mean to say anyone was actually being bribed, to be honest. But a student union newspaper implying as much could get people asking the right questions, now that I think of it. With the possible side effect of making prof’s less willing to play along perhaps?
Fair enough, although the OP did assert that one of the reasons behind all of this was “probably instructor kickbacks and payola.”
Yeah, Amateur Barbarian’s been talking about bribery. Got any evidence for that, or are those just unfounded allegations?
It is an amoral game that’s legalized robbery.
The online parts are uniformly terrible in my experience, too. The electronic edition is a year or two out of date, and the online exercises are just there for the sake of having them.
I support this pitting.
And publishing a “special” edition just adds more to the cost, which seems to be passed down to the customers with the usual markup. I both support this pitting and suspect that people not on the official employment rosters of the publishers are getting a little fiduciary encouragement out of this.
:eek:
Being out of school for about a billion years now I had no idea such scams existed. I mean we bitched mightily about textbook prices when I was in college, but it was nothing like what I’m reading here. I’m honestly slightly shocked, though I suppose I shouldn’t be.
Damn fine rant. Fuck those publishers and the professors that go along with this thievery.
When I read the OP I figured the profs were getting some sort of perk but you have probably changed my mind. Why are the profs in the OP requiring such expensive books? Are they that clueless? I’ve taught computer classes at a local college; even as an inexperienced adjunct I knew to look for the cheapest option that fit my needs and I always made the textbook optional.
Books? Books? This is the fucking 21st fucking century! I sincerely thought that all textbooks would be well on their way to being tablet editions by now!
An interesting thing I just looked at - when I started X-ray schooling, I was told I had to buy a set of X-ray positioning books (quite large/heavy 3-book set) for around $600. Being cash-short at that time, I simply did not buy them and took copius notes plus listened attentively. In not buying those particular books, the Diretor of the program said I could be kicked out of program, etc, but since I was at top of class from Day One, he backed off on his demand.
A quick search shows these same book-set available for around $50-$60 (!!!) dollars nowadays for the whole set. Quite the price drop, 'eh? When I took my ARRT exam in San Antonio, there were around 700 folks, mostly Air Force/Army folk taking exam as well.ALL of my former classmates took the top 25-ish grades, due to how hard the teachers made us learn stuff exactly, and I scored 100% on exam after my argument that the only question I ‘missed’ was ambiguous and misleading in nature, and therefore tossed out from being part of score results from then on. And I did this without the need to purchase a very expensive set of books that were demanded I purchase. The Director actually sent me a very-personal congrats to where I had moved in interim (Idaho) of my achievement despite his backing down on his threat of kicking me out, and for my having challenged successfully a question that most everyone always missed over previous years, per all the teachers of X-ray school. Meant a lot to me.
<Non-related to OP, but part of how I could not buy all books required and still excel: I am/was an exception to ‘average’ student since I always scored in the 99th% of every required State achievement testings done through public schools, and actually graduated two years early from high school, though I could not get diploma until those two years passed due to some State requirement or such. I was the long-haired hippie dude who had the irritating nickname of ‘brainiac’ or such throughout every school I attended, and it makes my home-schooled dgtr envious/upset/angered when I try to help her with her math/science stuff.
I scored rather well on my SAT despite my having forgotten test was next morning ( a Saturday) and I had gone partying with buddies along 6th Street in Austin -> Cocaine, LSD, pot, you name it; all were in me when I took test. Can’t really laugh now at such irresponsibility, of course. When I got home around 0600, Mom reminded me very scoldingly (both Mom and step-Dad were cops at the time) of the test, and I hurrried to test site on motorcycle in pouring rain (without rain gear, LOL) and had a large puddle of water under me when taking test. Proctor of test was rather irritated at that, heh. He ran out of paper towels trying to keep floor dry in aisles around me. Oops.
Stuff came easily to me, so I did not rely upon anything but myself paying attention and taking notes needed and there were rare times when I borrowed, from my apartment roomie, one of the volumes to ensure I had the details/positions absolutely correct. I do know that some courses require more info than given out in class, so my example definitely does not meet the needs of other types educations or whatever>
I think it’s pretty much a natural consequence of the way the incentives and priorities align. The textbook company has a vested interest in trying to get as much money out of students, who are a captive audience; the people assigning the textbooks (sometimes individual professors, but very often departments or committees, if more than one section of the course is being taught) do not have a vested interest in helping students save money. No corruption needed, just a bit of inattention to prices on the academic side, and a lot of price-gouging on the publishers’ side.
I do try to save my students money, to the extent that it’s possible, but 1) I don’t get to pick the texts for my gen ed courses because the state requires all sections of the same course to be taught with the same textbook, and some of my colleagues insisted on the fancy hardcover comp textbook with all the slick color illustrations and supplemental readings that I don’t actually use because they bear no resemblance to the kind of essays I want my students to learn how to write; and 2) sometimes there are really no cheap options, or at any rate no good cheap options.
Yeah, the idea that professors are getting some kind of bribe or kickback from the textbook publishers makes me laugh. I can’t guarantee it never happens, but I’ve certainly never heard of it happening. The most likely explanation for why professors require such expensive books is that they, quite reasonably, want to use the best, most suitable book for the course, and when deciding which text to use, they either look at the available choices and pick the one they think is best, or they start looking around at what’s available and stop looking once they’ve found one that looks like it will work. Sometimes they don’t even think about price, and sometimes they believe, rightly or wrongly, that all the available alternatives are close enough in price that it’s not worth factoring that in. (Not assigning or not requiring a textbook may be a reasonable option for some classes, but not for others.) And often they’re limited to requiring a book that’s currently in print, so that the bookstore can obtain enough copies to sell to all the students, which may be why they have to switch to a newer edition even if they don’t want to.
1000x this. Plus it’s very hard to get accurate pricing about textbooks from the publishers and then you have to take into account markups by the bookstore. In addition, sometimes certain types of financial aid won’t cover books that are listed as “recommended” rather than required. Finally, I’ve ordered certain versions of books that are more pricey because the bookstore promises to buy them back when other versions (customs or three ring binder versions) they won’t.
I agree with everything you’ve said here, and i also agree with what IvoryTowerDenizen said in response, but i still think the professors who work this way need to be criticized, and need to be pressured to change their practices.
When i was in grad school, i noticed that quite a few of the professors were completely oblivious to the financial stresses of being a student. Some of them would make blithe comments related to money, or would make suggestions about things to buy, that made very clear that they thought we all had as much money as they did.
This attitude was, i guess, somewhat understandable given that my grad school was a very expensive university where most of the undergrads (but not the grad students) came from wealthy families. But professors at lower-tier universities and community colleges, as in the OP’s case, have absolutely no excuse for not thinking about students’ finances when setting course materials. University fees have more than doubled in the California State University system since 2005, and many of our students struggle financially. We need to put that at the front of our minds, and if keeping costs reasonable means that designing a course takes a bit more effort, then it’s something we should do. We should, though, also recognize that if the best stuff IS a bit more expensive, we should go with it. When the students are paying $7,000 a year for a degree (as mine are), it seems like a false economy to save them ten or twenty bucks on a textbook, if the book isn’t as good.
I’ve never had the problem, described by IvoryTowerDenizen, where it’s been difficult to find out the actual price of the book. Hell, for the books i use, the students can order it straight from the publisher if they want to, and the price is right there on the publisher’s site. For the text i’m using this semester, our campus bookstore price is $5.75 (about 11%) more than the price on the publisher’s website. Amazon is cheaper than either of them.
I do think that IvoryTowerDenizen’s point about buyback pricing is important. If the book i choose costs students ten or twenty bucks more than the alternative, but they can make that money back on resale, it might be worth getting the more expensive book. It also helps to choose books that are widely used in your field. If i decide, for some reason, to stop using my current textbook at the end of this semester, my students will still be able to sell their used copies because the book is an immensely popular one that is used on campuses all over the country. A book like the one described in the OP, which has basically no resale value at all, is a real pain in the ass, and should only ever be assigned as an absolute last resort, in my opinion.
Of course, the resale market is part of what causes publishers to get creative with custom editions and bundling in the first place. I was reading an article about textbooks a while back, and it said that sales of a new textbook drop off by around 50 percent after the first year, and at least the same again after the second, largely due to all of the used copies that hit the market. I know it’s easy to see the publishers as money-grubbing assholes, but textbooks are expensive to produce, especially if you use lots of images. There’s not only the printing costs that skyrocket with color images, but the permissions and copyright clearances for pictures are also often expensive.
To be honest, i think that many textbooks use too many pictures. That’s why i’m happy with my cheaper edition, which has all the same text, but fewer (and monochrome) images. Archive and library and historical society and government websites provide me with literally millions of fantastic historical images that i can use for free in the classroom. A massive number of these are out of copyright or were never protected by copyright at all (e.g., government-produced work), and most of the rest are made freely available for educational and non-profit use.
But it’s not just the profs that need to change their attitude. You know where the pressure comes from, in many cases, for all the expensive new tech gimmicks and online quizzes and pictures and stuff? From the students themselves. Many of them want their learning to be easy and entertaining, not challenging and instructive. My course evaluations constantly ask for stuff like more in-class videos, and in my most recent round of evaluations i had a bunch of complaints because i ask my history students to write a 3-page essay and a 6-page essay, as well as four short one-page responses, over the course of the semester. Most of the students who complained about this stuff wanted weekly online, multiple-choice quizzes instead. And many of them also complained about being asked to read a whole chapter of the textbook for class every week.
Let me be very clear: caving in to student demands here would make my job immeasurably easier. Do you know much more time it takes me to grade a class worth of essays than it does to set up a few self-grading multiple-choice quizzes? I could dramatically reduce my workload by going with all of the new technology, and reducing the amount of reading and writing that my students are required to do. Work would be a fucking breeze. But learning history is about reading, and understanding issues and concepts and events in context. It’s about critical thinking and debate and argumentation and writing. I don’t want to give that stuff up, not for students who think that a degree should require little or no effort, nor for publishers whose main priority is the bottom line.
/soapbox 
Okay. Care to extend that to the bookstore itself, or the college, and include the more or less indirect “kickbacks” that come from selling only the more costly and more “locked” titles. Because all of that - the “college” as a whole profiting from the publisher’s manipulations, at the expense of the students, is my main point. If the instructors aren’t getting any directly, it doesn’t change the equation much. And I know of cases - special cases, most likely - where professors did receive much more direct rewards for helping the publisher pressure the bookstore/college into certain choices.