The Broken Textbooks: The Price Of College Students

If you have ever been studied in the US, you will know one of the hottest topics of college students is the price of student textbooks. Especially as an exchange student from an Asian country, I deeply feel the effects caused by the big differences in textbook price between the US and my country. It is no doubt that the money that students spend on their textbooks has become one of the biggest financial struggles they have to deal with. According to The New York Post, the National Association of College Stores give a data that the average college student spends $655 every year for course textbooks (1). However, in my country, it only cost students round $30 for textbooks each year. The high price of textbooks has become a common issue in the

According to the Fixing The Broken Textbook Market, the average student spends on their textbooks and supplies has been as much as 39% of tuition and fees at a community college and 14% of tuition and fees at a four-year public institution (7). Furthermore, new textbook prices support the whole textbook market, and continue to grow at a swift speed. In the past ten years, the studies done on college textbook costs and the effects on the students made by PIRGs show people that the basic cause for high prices comes from a fundamental market flaw in the publishing industry (Senack 7). In a typical market, there is a direct relationship between the consumer and provider. The consumer controls prices by always choosing the better value, which forms a competition in the producers and forces them to lower costs and meet their needs. However, the books that are required by the professor are always constant, which means the market no longer depends on people’s demands, so producers and publishers are no longer controlled by the customers. Publishers are able to drive prices higher without fear of backlash (Senack

It sounds unbelievable, but the high prices of textbooks have already affected the most important parts of college life. There is also a survey made by Senack in 2014, which stated: “students are not only choosing not to purchase the materials they are assigned by their professor, but they are knowingly accepting the risk of a lower grade to avoid paying for the textbook” (5). Students are supposed to be concerned about their grades, however, expensive textbooks keep them from doing so. Textbooks become a hinder of the student being successful. Besides, over 60% of the ten Coastal students on my survey said that they were avoiding buying textbooks, they spend a lot of time on finding and comparing the prices between different providers at the beginning of each of the semester. Since new textbooks are always the most expensive ones, Coastal students keep their eyes out for the old textbooks which was published few years ago, or buy or rent a used book