Vinh Nguyen
Since I made a post pertaining to textbook costs last week, I decided to make another post relating to the price inflation of textbooks. On my last post, I mentioned that the expenditures most students spend on textbooks is the largest after tuition, room and board. According to this article, some colleges believe that the publishing industry is making the costs even higher by releasing new editions and packaging books with expensive study aids such as study guides, test questions, disks, etc. What is the publishing industry's response? The $3.4-billion-a-year higher education publishing industry reasons that textbooks must be continually modernized in order to grasp the students' attentions. However, the reissuing of editions forces professors into using new books, resulting in students buying new books. A recent study that was done by California's Public Interest Research Group reveals that the average time between editions is 3.8 years even when the information has not changed since the last edition. Moreover, new edition of the textbooks that were surveyed cost 58% more than the previous edition. Believe it or not, professors sometimes play a role in increasing textbook prices without knowing. Because most professors like to order textbooks that have appealing graphs and charts to keep the students' interests, these pictures can be expensive to design. Furthermore, professors are looking for more contents for teaching, leading to the addition of learning tools such as Web site access, study guides, etc. Since these additions are sometimes mandatory, students have no other options but to spend more money on them. So next time one goes to the bookstore to buy a book, think about whether he or she should get the older version or get the new version from overseas.
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