Oracle Online

A recent letter to the editor saved me the trouble of finding an example of this. In the Sept. 19 issue of the Oracle, Stacy Scarazzo of the Association of Higher Publishers accused the Oracle of failing “to provide an accurate understanding of the changing nature of today’s college textbooks.” She cited the “Student Monitor, an independent student research service” to back up her claim that “tuition and student fees have increased at a faster rate than the average new textbook price.” She went on to claim that “the average college student spent $644 on textbooks during the ’05-’06 academic year.”
It took only brief research to discover that it was Stacy Scarazzo who failed to provide an accurate understanding. Her sources and her figures are suspect, and lead me to believe that she is just a PR hack for the textbook industry.
I may be an outspoken critic of our government, but I have to give it props for keeping fantastic records. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has published a study of college textbook prices at www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-05-806. Their study reveals that “the average estimated cost of books and supplies per first-time, full-time student for academic year ’03-’04 was $898 at four-year public institutions, or about twenty-six percent of the cost of tuition and fees.” The cost at two-year institutions was $886, which is still considerably higher than the $664 Ms. Scarazzo quotes. I can only speculate that perhaps her figure counts the used books she apparently abhors, or that the average student doesn’t actually purchase around $250 worth of books every year, or that her school sampling is not representative.

And her claim that tuition and fees went up more than new textbooks, although technically accurate, is also misleading. According to the GAO, “rising at an average of 6 percent each year since academic year 1987-1988...college textbook prices trailed tuition and fee increases, which averaged 7 percent per year.”

During this same period, inflation averaged three percent, meaning new textbook prices increased at twice the rate of inflation but only one percent less than tuition and fees.
Interestingly, a perusal of the website of her only cited source, Student Monitor, shows it to be a for-profit market research company. I couldn’t uncover its methods and data any more than I could find the “one survey” that Ms. Scarazzo cites claiming that “seventy-five percent of professors require or recommend that students use textbooks with [new teaching materials, such as CDs, online self-assessment tests, interactive learning tools and online homework].” I wonder if she conjured this survey from the same place she conjured her $664 figure for textbook costs.

Of course, I should mention that it’s possible that all her figures and sources are accurate, and it is the Government Accountability Office that’s wrong. But I think I’d have to be a conspiracy theorist to buy that, and even flaming liberals like me don’t go that far.

No, I find it far more plausible that textbook publishers crank out new editions every couple of years because the markets become flooded with used books, and the publishers need to milk students for more profit. It’s really not much different than changing car styles and upgrading computers, or any other form of planned obsolescence. They update it every few years, and then trot out some rationalizations about how it’s necessary. Usually changing a couple of questions and adding some meaningless tidbits does the job.

Then students shell out their scarce money for textbook prices that increase at double the rate of inflation. It makes me glad to be at a university where many teachers recommend using older editions or don’t use standard textbooks at all, and where we have a bookstore that works hard to obtain used books instead of stocking the shelves with all new titles. If more colleges follow suit, we can make the Association of Higher Publishers as obsolete as my economics book from last year.