Last year, the publishing industry dealt a serious blow to
college students across the United States with a copyright lawsuit
against small companies that print course readers. Here at UCLA,
prices for course readers skyrocketed from $15-$25 to $80-$100, as
expensive royalties were required for each included piece. This, in
addition to overpriced textbooks and professors who assign too many
books in general, has UCLA students paying as much as $1000 per
quarter for reading material.
It is time for students to strike back. ASUCLA should launch a
lawsuit of its own against textbook publishing companies for price
gouging. There is no reason for books such as
“Calculus” by Stewart to cost upward of $150 from
domestic distributors yet only $70 from distributors in the United
Kingdom.
It has become too easy for publishing companies to use their
monopoly to charge exorbitant prices ““ especially in many
upper-division classes, which may cover such specific material that
only one or two textbooks on the subject are available.
However, much of the problem with course reader prices can be
solved if professors reevaluate what material they choose to
include in their readers. Some poems or short articles are simply
not worth the $10-$15 of royalties that corporations charge for
them. Often, a work in the public domain can be just as appropriate
““ and can usually be found for free on the Internet. This
past year, I had a French professor who was able to halve the price
of the course reader for her class simply by eliminating expensive
pieces.
In addition, professors could address the problem of expensive
textbooks by requiring the library to maintain a greater number of
textbook copies on reserve. Keeping only five copies of a textbook
on reserve for a 400-person lecture is virtually worthless,
especially around midterms and finals times when everyone tries to
check the books out at the same time.
Professors should also reevaluate the number of books they
assign. I myself was surprised to discover that there were nine
books required for just one of my history classes. And I am sure
that other students have experienced reading lists even longer than
this.
Professors need to be more realistic about the amount of reading
they assign. Often, a book listed on the syllabus as
“required” is not necessarily required to receive an A
in the course. Professors are not being honest when they assign
books and then do not include material from them on tests or in
paper topics. I don’t need to be tricked into learning. If I
want to read extra material, I will.
In some cases, professors may even have ulterior motives for
assigning books, because they receive royalty payments for each
copy sold. For example, a certain art history professor assigned
three books that he authored for a general education art history
class of 300 students. The books ended up containing such specific
material that little to no reading of them was required to receive
an A in the class.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to demonize UCLA
professors or blame this situation on them; the real demons are the
publishing companies. However, there is a lot more that professors
could be doing ““ and that I am asking them to do ““ to
help students.
This is not USC. Most UCLA students personally incur some, if
not all, of the cost of their education. And with the current
University of California fee hikes, we are even more strapped for
cash than ever. We study hard, and we work many hours at low-paying
jobs to help defray the cost of such things as textbooks. As of
now, it takes us about two months of hard work at minimum wage jobs
to earn enough to pay for just a quarter’s worth of
textbooks.
Bitondo is a third-year political science and history
student.