As classes resume and the university bookstore grows ever more congested with students, renewed attention has been focused on the debate over the rising cost of textbooks, which has yielded a great deal of anxiety over the last few years but few answers.
A Government Accountability Office study released in July found that the average student spends $900 per year on textbooks. Textbook prices have risen at approximately 6 percent per year since 1986, the study said, twice the average rate of inflation and close to the rate at which college tuition is rising nationally. The overall increase in textbook prices since 1986 has been 186 percent, the study said.
According to the study, at a four-year private college like Georgetown, textbook costs account for about 8 percent of expenses for college students, the largest expense behind tuition and fees.
Many students at Georgetown have devised creative ways to get their textbooks at a lower cost. Moya O’Connor (COL ’06) said that finding books online and borrowing them from friends are two ways that she has avoided high textbook prices.
Experts say that while several factors are responsible for driving up textbook prices, supplemental products accompanying many textbooks have driven costs particularly high. These products, including bundled CDs and companion Web sites, now accompany textbooks in many subjects.
In an August 16 letter to the GAO, the Association of American Publishers acknowledged that the addition of supplemental materials to textbooks has contributed to rising prices, but said that these price increases are justified.
The AAP disputed the GAO study, saying that the new supplemental materials were introduced in response to faculty requests.
“Your professors are the professionals that determine how the course will be structured for their students,” AAP spokesman Bruce Hildebrand said. Textbook choices are based on the students’ skill sets and capabilities, he added.
“At the freshman and sophomore level across the spectrum of courses, there’s a much greater demand by the faculty for supplemental material or bundle material to help their students succeed,” Hildebrand said.
As prices continue to rise, publishers and students alike are struggling to find ways to keep prices down. Some publishers have released textbooks that are available online, as well as customized textbooks that only contain the chapters that professors believe are relevant to their particular courses.
The AAP said that measures like these will lower prices, but that they must be managed with professors’ needs and expectations.
Many Georgetown students expressed dissatisfaction with textbook prices.
“I just think that the prices are ridiculous . because it seems that the textbooks are re-released in new editions every couple of years with just enough changes to make using an older edition a major annoyance,” Jason Hwang (SFS ’08) said.
Sara Ho (COL ’07) said that she finds supplements such as study guides and CDs – which often drive up the prices of textbooks – to be “very useful” for some classes.
“My psychology professor based all of his quizzes off of the study guide book,” she said.
Ho added that the economics of textbook-pricing are understandable to a certain extent.
“Every industry wants to make as much money as they can,” she said. “[Publishers] know they can do it. People are still buying their books.”
