College students today face many daunting costs in financing their education. Many of these costs are justified by how expensive it is to run a university. But the price of books is not.
According to a federal advisory committee set up to study why textbooks are so expensive, there are several steps that could be taken to alleviate those expenses.
The panel brought up suggestions such as publishers creating fewer unnecessary new editions and supplemental materials, schools creating more book rental programs, professors changing their required books less frequently, creating more scholarship money for textbooks, and using more free online resources instead of books.
These are all great ideas to help ease the cost of textbooks ““ which have risen at more than twice the rate of inflation over the past 20 years, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office ““ for students who are strapped for cash.
But it would be foolish to overlook the lesser cousin of textbooks ““ the course readers ““ in a discussion of the cost of books.
Course readers represent an equally large burden to students’ bank accounts, yet somehow they seem to hit harder. Maybe it’s that they aren’t real books with a writer and editors. Maybe it’s that you can’t sell them back. Whatever it is, there’s no real need for them.
Course readers are exorbitantly expensive ““ often pushing the $100 mark ““ and are ultimately nothing more than a collection of articles. Sure, you have to pay to license the materials for publication and you have to pay for the printing and the binding. But it’s simply not necessary.
The university should be more proactive about putting course reader materials online. This way the unnecessary costs can be avoided and students can have easier access to their materials.
Some course readers are already produced on campus through the UCLA Store, but these are also too expensive. Instead, UCLA should coordinate the online publication of the same materials on course Web sites.
This may not free us from paying royalties on the materials, but at least it would eliminate the printing cost of producing course readers. The cost could be spread out among the class, and students would end up paying a lot less for unnecessary course readers.
The university could then set up a service that would automatically print course readers for a student’s classes upon request and charge them for printing and binding. That way students who like to take notes or highlight in their readers would be able to do so.
Students spend, on average, almost $900 a year on books, according to a 2005 report by the Affordable Textbooks Campaign, and there are a lot of things universities and other institutions can do to help.
Hopefully the federal advisory panel will produce an insightful solution ““ and publishers and college campuses will put it into action ““ in May when the panel produces its final report for Congress.
The panel and others concerned about this issue should not, however, underestimate the impact of course readers.
They are an extra financial burden to students and cannot be sold back or reused. At the same time, an alternative to expensive course readers is not out of reach.