Nathan Look's blog

Lovely, lovely, expensive textbooks

Most first year students (myself included) think that tuition is the only major financial burden associated with university. Sadly, we are mistaken, because there is a $300 to $700 cost for textbooks, with the average textbook costing $100. Just a few decades ago, a textbook could be bought for $3. Some blame inflation, but the rising price is still grossly disproportional to inflation costs, which means there are other factors to take into account.

The main factor is that students basically have two choices when it comes to university textbooks, buy the book and pass the course or opt not to and fail. The plight of university students is well-known to publishers and bookstores, and since their strategy is to take as much money from their customers as possible without inciting a boycott, they raise the price of books exponentially. However, this is not their only tactic to increase their bottom line. To coerce students into buying new textbooks instead of from their friends or online, they package CDs and online codes with the book that are “essential” to a student’s education. Another tactic they employ is to continually produce new editions of textbooks every few years, justifying that the newer books contain new and important material. How can an entry level math course need a new textbook when students have essentially been taught the same material for the past fifty years? The vicious cycle of university textbooks; professors coldly assign new editions to buy, students resentfully buy the textbooks, and bookstores greedily take the money. It is a wonder that the majority of our population want a higher education.