When you're applying for college, one of the first things that you look at is the tuition. How much is it going to cost for you to go there? How much in scholarships can you get to bring the cost down? Grants? Loans?
After all that is said and done, you finally move in to your dorm and get acquainted with your new school. Although by the time classes start, a new hurdled becomes apparent.
Textbooks.
In high school, you never had to pay for textbooks-unless you were taking a college level class. For example, I remember taking college level psychology my senior year of high school and we did have to pay for a textbook.
This isn't a question of why students have to pay for textbooks? This is a question of why they cost so much? I know people who have bought all of their books and their total ended up being around $400.
Insane right?
In order to hopefully find an answer to this question, I decided to do some research. The first article that I came across was from Economist.com . It was a short article, but it did have some great little nuggets of knowledge.
"Like doctors prescribing drugs, professors assigning textbooks do not pay for the products themselves, so they have little incentive to pick cheap ones." -Why textbooks cost so much. (economist.com)
I had never thought about it like that. Comparing when a doctor prescribes drugs to a professor assigning textbooks. In a way, it makes sense. 9 times out of ten professors do not pay for the textbooks that they assign and if they do it's at a discounted rate. Now, I wonder what it would be like if the professors had to pay the same amount of money for the textbook as their students? Would that be the incentive to pick cheaper books?
Another article that I looked at was from UsNews . This article not only examines the rising cost of textbooks, it also gives some insight into where the money that you pay for the book actually goes.
"According to figures from the National Association of College Stores, an average of 21.6 cents of every dollar spent on a new textbook will go to the bookstore, whether for personnel costs, operations, or income. For Kadue's $289 textbook, that's around $62. Another cent of every dollar pays for the freight of shipping a heavy book around, so subtract another $3 from her cost. That leaves around $224 that goes to the publisher, or around 77.4 cents for every dollar."- How Your Textbook Dollars Are Divvied Up by Danielle Kurtzleben (usnews).
I had never thought about where the money actually goes after a student buys a textbook, so reading this was interesting. In a way, it made sense. Multiple parts of the business were involved in getting the textbook into the hands of the student, so each part needed to be paid their share. This seems especially true if you're buying your book from a bookstore.
After researching the question, I can't say that the answer is clear as to why textbooks cost so much. I do know that there are a lot more layers of this textbook issue. Do they cost so much because different businesses from the bookstore to the publishing company all need their fair share? Is it because professors are picking books that they themselves do not have to pay for, so price doesn't matter?
What do you think?
