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What makes you think its colleges and universities that set the cost of textbooks?

• bell-cot 5y ago
  "Set the cost" as in "New Mexico Highlands University told $Huge_Publisher that they have to sell 'Advanced Calculus, 7th Edition', by Epsilon X. McDollars, to NMHU students taking Math 311 for only $25 per copy"? (Vs. $Huge_Publisher's normal price of $175.) Um, no. "Set the cost" as in "NMHU's required textbook for Math 311 will now be 'Advanced Calculus: Second Edition', by David V. Widder" - which is a real book, list price of $22.95, from Dover Books - yeah, that way is darn easy. And when NMHU sticks with that book for a few terms, there will be plenty of used copies around campus, for only $15 or $20.
  • pmags 5y ago
    I get the appeal of classic texts like the Dover math series -- I've got plenty of them on my own bookshelf. But the reality of most fields of study is that a 60+ year old textbook just doesn't cut it in terms of topics covered, advances in the field, or modern pedagogical practice. As a unversity professor myself, I am always seeking out open publishing or less expensive options for my students. The sad reality is that while there are some nice "open publishing" textbooks available, and I try and use these for my own classes whenever appropriate, very few such efforts can match the quality of a professionally edited textbook in terms of breadth of topics covered, quality of illustrations and figures, referencing to the recent literature, etc. I wish it was otherwise, but that's currently the state of affairs in the sub-fields my work touches on (genetics, genomics, computational biology). For senior students and grad students I can usually draw on the primary literature rather than a textbook per se, but that's rough going for most students in their first few years of university.
    • bell-cot 5y ago
      For seniors & grad students, in a fair number of subjects, sadly yes. But for lower-level students, or in many other subjects - things like up-to-date references to the literature are not so important in (say) a senior-level abstract algebra text. Or they can go on a simple "Other Resources for this Course" web page that the Dept. maintains. (Point of amusement - one of my own grad school math texts, first published in 1966, is currently "List price: $175" on Amazon. Admittedly, I studied from a later edition of Rudin. But I suspect it didn't change all that much.)
    • formerkrogeremp 5y ago
      I had a professor similar to you in college, and he was a real life saver for working with us on reducing textbook costs. I really appreciated his and your efforts to provide quality, affordable books and learning materials.
• textbookbound 5y ago
  > What makes you think its colleges and universities that set the cost of textbooks? Perhaps not set at the University-level, but they likely allow ethically dubious practices that inflate the cost of texts and line the pockets of their teaching staff. Being a university drop-out, I took the opportunity to test the waters at my local technical college for a Cybersecurity program during the lockdown with a free first-year program. For the English course, I was required to purchase a $120 dollar copy of a book authored by $PROFESSOR_1, $PROFESSOR_2, et. al. - this was a small collection of stories NOT written by these professors but simply chosen by them and printed by a firm which provides what one can only describe as kickbacks to these professors. Of course, each year two or three stories are swapped out such that one could never purchase last year's used copy. So are the universities explicitly setting costs? No, but they're full-well not setting standards and practices to reign them in either.
• aussiegreenie 5y ago
  They can specifiy "Open Source Textbooks" or at least ones without a one-off code for marketing tests.