A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Want to get ripped off? Royally? Just buy a college textbook these days. Textbook authors and publishers are gouging students with the shamelessness and ruthlessness of a rogue derivatives trader. For example, the Los Angeles Times just reported that a math professor at Cal State Fullerton was reprimanded for choosing a textbook on linear algebra and differential equations that cost just half of the college’s standard text, a $180 tome that just happened to be written by the math department’s chairman.
That’s not chump change, especially for students. And it’s certainly more than I paid for my math textbooks. In 1965, my freshman year, I paid $10.95 for Schwartz’s Analytic Geometry and Calculus. That’s $64 in today’s dollars, or approximately one-third the price of the book at Cal State Fullerton.
A year later, I purchased Introduction to Logic, by Copi, for $6.95, which is $41 in today’s dollars. Today’s edition, the 14th, costs $147.64 at Amazon. It’s up from 512 pages to 688, so increase the inflation adjusted historical price to $55. And while the 14th edition’s listed authors are Copi, Cohen, and McMahon, readers should know that Copi died in 2002.
This is crazy. Professors claim that academic freedom gives them the right to choose the textbooks for their classes, but the greed of some, coupled with the greed of textbook publishers and authors, amounts to imposing economic slavery on students (some professors do try to choose affordable textbooks). Printing high quality books is not that expensive. No textbook costs $150 in paper and ink. And today’s textbooks are not three times better than the textbooks of 1965. Authors and publishers are gouging students.
My solution? Shorten the copyright for textbooks to five years, and enact laws prohibiting more than a ten percent markup on textbooks. It’s time to stop ripping off students and their families.