Cost Of College Textbooks

According to priceonomics.com, the College Board recently estimated that the average student spends upwards of $1,200 per year on textbooks. (This figure is much higher for students at for-profit colleges and trade schools.) Between 2002 and 2013, the price of college textbooks rose 82% — nearly three times the rate of inflation, according to a recent study by the Government Accountability Office. This results to higher costs and expenses for college students, but what makes this idea difficult to accept is that resell prices on these textbooks will significantly drop due to newer editions of the same textbook being released every year. Textbook costs are rapidly increasing overall student debt, with 70 percent of college students now saying

To simply break this down, for every dollar spent on a book, 77 cents goes to the publisher, 22 cents goes to the bookstore and 1 cent towards shipping. Of those 77 cents, the publishing company makes about 18 cents in pure profit, while spending 15 cents on marketing, and roughly 32 percent to cover costs (paper, printing, employee salaries, etc) (Kurtzleben, 2012). While 18 cents per dollar for a publisher might seem just about fair, we need to understand that publishers release new editions every two to three years with very little change in these textbooks, so their profit increases exponentially. Publishers are now releasing new editions that are bundled with DVDs, CDs and study guides that are unnecessary and useless to most students and professors. These bundles are a scheme to justify the high cost of the new

PIRG Education Fund and Student PIRGs, 65 percent of students stated they didn’t buy a required textbook because it was too expensive, even as 94 percent of this group expressed concern that it would hurt their grade (Opidee, 2014). Students are being negatively affected due to these high costs, and even refrain from taking certain classes because of costs associated with the required textbook. With tuition on the rise, students have enough to worry, so the additional textbook costs adds more stress, which can negatively affect their education. According to management consultant Joe Eposito who works at a publishing company, “College textbooks are interesting to [him] in a lot of ways because the economics are just so screwy...It has to do with the fact that the people who are actually making the purchases are not the people who are selecting the purchases.” That statement is significant because professors select purchases without even knowing the