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Inflation Nation: College Textbook Prices Soar 1000% Since 1977
Wondering why the drop-out rate from college is so high? One reason could be that a stunning 65% of students avoided buying textbooks due to the cost. As NBCNews reports, textbook prices have risen over three times the rate of inflation from January 1977 to June 2015, a 1,041 percent increase - dwarfing the government's official CPI data. Just as government-subsidized healthcare has 'enabled' dramatic rises in the costs of drugs so government-subsidized education has sparked hyperinflation-esque pricing in college textbooks
As NBCNews reports, students hitting the college bookstore this fall will get a stark lesson in economics before they've cracked open their first chapter. Textbook prices are soaring. Some experts say it's because they're sold like drugs.
According to NBC's review of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, textbook prices have risen over three times the rate of inflation from January 1977 to June 2015, a 1,041 percent increase.
"They've been able to keep raising prices because students are 'captive consumers.' They have to buy whatever books they're assigned," said Nicole Allen, a spokeswoman for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.
In some ways, this is similar to a pharmaceutical sales model where the publishers spend their time wooing the decision makers to adopt their product. In this case, it's professors instead of doctors.
"Professors are not price-sensitive and they then assign and students have no say," said Ariel Diaz, CEO of Boundless, a free and low-cost textbook publisher.
But whether individual students are paying a literal 1,041 percent more today than they were in 1977 is not the question, said Mark Perry, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan who has tracked rising textbook prices for years.
"College textbook prices are increasing way more than parents' ability to pay for them," he said. At the extreme end, one specialized chemistry textbook on his campus costs $400 at the campus bookstore.
How rising textbook prices mirrors rising drug costs...
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And all of that information is free on the Internet...
Dream on. I work in the technical sector and for some things i have to buy books.
Not all technical or scientific information is freely available on the internet.
And if jou have to be sure the info is correct, let say for calculations for a project than wiki is not the best information source.
Shit, yeah.
Try to find building or fire codes on the web.
God help you if you don't comply with them.
Wasn't there a court case moving towards the Supremes on this?
Some guy who is doing a one-off project spends the same as some chain developer who buys one book and does the same thing 25-50 times (Dollar General) in the same state.
Those union member college teachers with sky-high salaries for 16 hour work weeks and multimillion dollar equivalent pensions have to make a living somehow. Require the kiddies to use your outrageously expensive text books!!!
... And print the cash for the tuitions.
God Bless Rockhound57.
Put all books online. Bid book contract to Amazon to fullfill ebook distribution.
Kill printed book cartel
Take savings and rebate taxpayers the difference.
Taxpayers should hire illegal aliens to do sit-ins at state boards to protest book cartel. They could also cook and sell Coronas and faquitas.
They all need to die for the lower line on the chart. Books are a drop in the bucket.
pods
Upvote. Yeah. Ok. It only takes $3 of today's FRNs to purchase what $1 would purchase in 1977. BULLSHIT COUGH COUGH BULLSHIT
http://www.shadowstats.com/inflation_calculator
According to ^^, the BLS says $3.93, JW says (doesn't have a number) but the graphical representation looks like about $16. The Fed says $3.95 on their official inflation calculator: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/
Anyone that still believes official statistics are accurate is probably BTFD/BTFATH right now and not paying attention to much else.
I'm giving a talk this fall on College Life: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I will try to get it uploaded to Zerohedge if my sponsors will allow. It is a for-profit symposium so it has to be cleared. Hammering for-profit symposia in 3...2...1...
By the way, anybody who figures out how to round up out-of-date textbooks for pennies (they are considered worthless on the open market) in large enough numbers to guarantee supply for large intro courses will make a fortune because the faculty are sensitive to this issue. I did it for a lab course: I bought 40 books with my own money (not much) and put them in the lab drawers. They served our students for a decade for free.
These days the PDF version of just about all new textbooks is available on the Internet. You can buy a Kindle version at reduced cost, but the dirty-little-secret is many of them can be downloaded free (if you look hard enough). The flip side is that the Big Textbook Publishers are deploying online services that augment the text; this actually makes the book MOAR expensive, but often makes the class much more automated (including grading). However, professors get nearly unlimted free books and access to all the online material. It's all about making the Professor's life easier at a higher cost to the student.
"Those union member college teachers with sky-high salaries for 16 hour work weeks and multimillion dollar equivalent pensions have to make a living somehow. Require the kiddies to use your outrageously expensive text books!!!"
That is a fictional character you just described. And, while I'm it, anybody who is not cutting a deal with at least a 50% off retail (at least for a big course) is a dolt.
Really, it's not fictional at all. Check out some State universities sometime. In fact, 16 hours a week may be pushing it. At top schools, many professors only teach one class per semester.
I only teach one class per semester and am in front of my computer from 7:00 Am to 12:00 PM, much of that time doing my job.
I am guessing that most of your job relates to research, not teaching. If so, then you probably get compensated for that time from grants. It is possible you teach a very large class (> 100). But at most universities, professors get "helpers" for classes that large. So those helpers end up doing most of the grading while the professor lectures. And let's face it: lectures are recycled from semester to semester.
If you are indeed teaching one class with no research, then congratulations: you won life's lottery.
Sorry, but anything in a college textbook is freely available on the web somewhere. If you need proprietary information or the latest research that's another story, but your average college textbook doesn't have that kind of information.
+1
Not only is the information in most college textbooks freely available on the web, the information on the web is far superior than the rehashed drivel in textbooks.
In Psychology textbooks for example, I didn't need a publisher's interpretation of what Freud or Jung meant to say, I just went to their original works and read them on my own! I learned more from Carl Jung's original works than I did taking Psych courses in upper division university classes. Not only that, his old paperbacks currently go for $5 or $10 on Amazon.
I was looking at my friend's daughter's Psych 101 book that cost her $147 and it was pure garbage. I told her to just watch some Adam Curtis documentaries and you will gain way more information from that, than this watered down drivel cover to cover.
I learned to never just go out and buy the book, I'd sit in class for a week or two and take good notes and ask about the exam. Usually you could pass just fine by going to class regular and taking good notes and I'd never even buy the book.
I once bought an expensive CE text (a class for non CE majors), took it to Kinkos, and copied the entire book. Then paid Kinkos to spiral bind it. Then I returned the overpriced book to the bookstore for a full refund.
I paid ~$20 for a $100 CE book that I would only have used for a summer semester. That was in 1990.
To get that $100 back then I had to spend 3 long days working outside doing manual labor.
Books were overpriced back then too.
Yep. Now an enterprising young student would buy the book, spend a few hours scanning the pages, then return it. Sell it to your friends. I'm sure fraternities have been doing that all along.
you are 100% wrong.
we are talking about college not grad school. all science and engineering of college level for passing into bullshit bachelour programs is on the net. 99% anyways. and i'm talkinga bout pirate bay .
+1
Most community college material today is rehashed lessons from 8th and 9th grade.
I find it funny that Obummer wants to make community college "free", why so we can re-teach 20 year olds things they should have learned when they were 13?
I looked up a course catalog for shits and giggles for this upcoming semester. The students basically need an Algebra class to complete the math portion for an associate's degree. I took Algebra in 8th grade when I was in school. The students nowadays take it as a 200-level class. The community colleges literally re-hash middle school and high school material.
The working world obviously hasn't been fooled by this massive fraud. That's why college grads land jobs at Starbucks or stocking shelves at Target. Graduating from college in the 2010s is like graduating high school in the 1990s, which was like 8th Grade graduation in the 1980s.
The skools keep the kids longer and longer in arrested development, and we get junk mail every election cycle from the Teacher's Unions begging for more tax increases to fund these travesties.
yeah, I remember that bullshit scam...pay between 50 and over 100 bucks for a book for 3 months...then if you want to sell it back at the book store you might get 8 bucks because "they had to update chapter "X" so this version is now out of date.
Those fucking book pimps were all assholes too. We all knew the scam. Us guys got 50% less for book buy-backs than our girl friends did. They always got double. Fucking douchebags. lol
And stealing books was a fucking industry in college! You never let your books out of your site or they were fucking gone. Had it happen once with an A&P book that cost me 110 bucks because I walked away from it at my table in the library to find another book. Came back and it was fucking gone. Lesson learned. Had to share w/ my roommate the rest of the term.
College is a fucking scam, plain and fucking simple. GLAD I DROPPED OUT!!! Cut my losses...didn't need that stupid fucking degree. Paid off my loans that I got suckered into.
FUCK 'EM!!!
Do you mean 'site' or 'sight'?
DavidC
...or cite?
or seight?
Write your name on the edge of the book (the part of the pages you see when the book is closed). Then everybody will know who they stole the book from.
All that money spent on textbooks......and we're more stupid than ever.
This type of bullshit comes out of people that never went to college. Sure, i found roughly half of my books online in pdf form, OCR at worst (and i'm sure i know computers better than you) but the other half i was forced to either buy, rent, or copy pages out of friends' books.
Don't be so cocky when you are so ignorant. Everyone worth their salt in economic knowledge knows that colleges are primed for price inflation. I shouldn't need to explain why, so i won't.
Because every loan is backstopped by the Feds
I never looked this up but I think college tuitions also soared by the same amount.
Clearly, this calls for ObamaBooks!
It's like having diabetes. The finger stick analyzer is practically given away but the strips are obscenely expensive. This is why it is wise to avoid it because you will be someone's cash cow for the rest of your life.
All texts should be virtual seeing most will be out of date in a few years. But where is the money in that?
Miffed
Version 21 of a basic mathematics textbook is not enough. Version 22 will contain some new never-before-seen problems that are a re-hash of older problems. For your learning convenience!!!
You mean that things like physics, math and other usefull knowledge for in the real world changes yearly?
The stuff that changes on a yearly basis is all the stuff that has no real valua in a real economy, like law or social studies and other crap.
Of course, many college professors decide to pusth their own books as required reading!
Biggest racket there is.
I ran into one college professor like that who was preaching the liberal progressive path to enlightenment. He and I used to spar verbally (one of those incredibly stupid liberal arts required courses), and one of the things I ripped him on was just that, him pushing his book. And it was complete trash.
Still got an A. Because I was one of the few in the class that didn't back down to his bullshit. And this was over 30 years ago.
Then there was a physics professor who also wrote the text. On sheer volume alone, it was one of the few books I ever thought was worth the cost. Small print, makes a good throwing weapon due to its weight.
Yes, this beast:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentals_of_Physics
Concur--and outstanding book. Used it in college, still own it and use it for reference. In that case, $$ well spent.
College textbooks are such a scam.
Take Calculus 1 through 3. A new edition of the text comes out every 2 years so it prevents getting a used copy (there aren't any) and if the professor specified an old edition enough copies might not be found. And the campus bookstore (in league with publishers) wants the hefty profit from selling a new book.
Does basic Calculus change? NO! Do students need color pictures of conic sections on shiny paper? NO! Do most undergrad subjects change? NO!
Many of my professors were concerned about textbook cost.
if you compare a calculus textbook from 1900
with subsequent calculus textbooks, you will notice
that--particularly since WWII-- they have been
continuously dumbed down, precipitosly so
in the last decade or two.
Three times the rate of inflation--is that the real rate or the government CPI that has been readjusted, etc.?
Nothing like getting raped and indoctrinated at the same time.
'Cuz the physics and the calculus changed.
/sarc
You are correct.
The Laws of Mechanics, Thermodynamics, and Mathematics, along with some principles of Material Sciences, were changed by Government edict after 9-11-2001.
The textbooks must be rewritten.
(You did not need include a /sarc tag. If your audience is too lame to discern that then they do not deserve to know it. Refuse to use it. And then laugh as the junks come from the most lame as I do. Let the ools expose themselves and get a decent laugh at a faraway target...AT THEIR EXPENSE.)
ongoing unreadable, unaffordable,
and nearly irrelevant, what's new
under the sun?
You know it is a Racket.
We have to ask what is not a Monopoly or a Racket or Racketeering... in order to find any solid ground.
Many of the people that came to the USA after 1776 can to capture the Government, the Banking, and Develop Monopolies just like back in Jolly old England.
USA Has Had So Many Coups that were never reported, it is the Biggest Fascist Operation in history.
I'm sure the Church of England and Catholic Church got in on it too taking land from the Indigenous people and pretending to help them and their kids while they starved them and gave them Small Pox.
It's disgusting. And it's our History.
How many people in the British Isles were captured by British Ships, used for impressment, then sold as Indentured and Bonded Servants who were never freed?
Greed.
Money.
Power.
Control.
Do enough and you get Lands and Titles, right?
We have to ask what is not a Monopoly or a Racket or Racketeering... in order to find any solid ground.
You must like brevity. Okay.
The following is my list of that which is not corrupted in this World...
/end list
it all starts with a legal tender,
this either or simultaneously eviscerates
and or enhances the individual, depending
on circumstances but it always empowers
those deemed responsible for adherence to
the legal and the tender. there is more
and i wish i had the inclination to expound
or know it. to say it like it is
parents' ability to pay for them
What the hell did I do wrong to have to pay for my own textbooks and education?
And when you sell them back to the school, you get one tenth of what you paid for them.
Talk about rubbing salt in the wound.
Not only do students have to read the liberal drivel in those books, they also have to pay up the ass for the privilege of doing so.
According to my own rule of thumb prices roughly doubled 4 times since 1977 (a 1600% increase: before 2009 doubling every 10 years, after every 8 years).
So textbook price increases are still lower than real average inflation...
The CPI? The CPI is s. h. i. t.
The text books are outrage not only because of their price, which is a result of appalling monopoly of publishers supported by free market politicians but the stupidity that they contain.
There is no scientific content in textbooks and the form is such that precludes any kind of learning but mindless pattern memorizing trickery based on half truths and half facts with insanely twisted interpretation and that including hard sciences as well.
No knowledge is being transferred at schools and Universities just submissive mindset serving current political prerogatives delivered by incompetent teachers projecting no honesty, ethics or morality into their students, not to mention specialized knowledge but chaos and confusion.
An interesting take on the educational system in US and elsewhere I found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/education-blessings-o...
Very true, even funnier is the fact that if you spend 5 minute reading summary/examples on Wikipedia for some physics problems you can pretty much understand it better than reading an entire chapter of the text book. Waste of paper and money, I rarely refer to text book when I stumble on a problem, it's usually physics forum or google.
Where's the part where the profs receiving kickbacks?
In business school kickbacks were unnecessary.
I had multiple professors who made us purchase textbooks they (co-)wrote, so we could use them for two or three chapters and then save the books "for later reference."
Awesome racket.
student debt or educational related
debt is a sure sign (precursor) of monetary, authoritarian
and governmental (societal) failure. the rot is
inside the mind and minds of the many participants
and manifest in the limbs of their more innocent victims,
curriculum they call it.
bankster voodoo man.
.
war. it is a sick feeding, human, man thing from hell.
seems chicks dig it too?
It's expensive as hell to rewrite history and substantiate global warming.
It's good thing I found torrent, international version of text book, 3rd party sellers and craigslist! Saved me tons of money while in school. Also I don't buy text book until one week into the course, some classes have a text book requirement but they hardly (more like never) ever use them in class! This is especially true for non-mathematic and non-bio courses.
You and I know, math is constantly changing, and I'm surprised the boys from NASA were able to get to Pluto using ten year old math. I bet every night they go to sleep counting their lucky stars.
And where are those tree buggers, why aren't they raising holly hell about the murdering of trees. What's the matter check stop coming and now you have to resort to aborting trees and selling off their parts for funds to buy books?
Hippocrates the whole lot of them.
So when you see the Democratic party roar it's nothing more then Government Flimflammers looking for a way to score.
they were already high in 1977
I specialize in photographing various scientific subjects and one day, a professor contacted me to ask permission to use some of my images for his astronomy textbook. He gave me the quantity of books to publish and number and size of the images he wanted to use and I quoted him a standard licensing fee.
This professor got angry. He told me that he could get images from NASA for free. Considering that his textbook would have cost his students somewhere north of USD 100, certainly there was room enough for my fee in his budget, considering the frigid conditions I was in when obtaining these images.
The professor was free to choose, of course. He expected me to hand him images gratis for the glory of being published in his textbook. I told him to go to NASA and not to bother me again. I do not tolerate contempt well.
This guy's colossal nerve has been typical of academe in America for ... how long now?
Literature textbooks are nearly as cheap thank goodness. But for every 5 unit class I take I have to purchase 4,000 pages of text on average and that adds up after 12 courses.
there is no economy of scale in textbooks, and there is a large amount of waste, classes get oversubscribed, and then students buy used books instead of new, or share books, or steal books. the bookstore has to have the order in weeks ahead of the first class to allow for time to print the closest estimate of actual books needed. so you have a very limited run, in a short period with a large number of returns. the offshore publishing market in china can fill the gap on an as needed basis, but the shipping costs are prohibitive, books weigh a lot. and most textbooks are so poorly written that they have no intrinsic value. the publishers change editions every third or fourth printing. its surprising they havent pushed the online version of textbooks. but then if you have a really concise well written book, you dont need the professor. the educator is part entertainer, part motivational speaker, but when there arent any jobs people head to the college thinking a degree will solve the problem. and the college is more than happy to do the trick for a price
my diff eq professor said in the first week of the semester (in a completely uninteliglble eastern european accent) I dont care care if any of you pass or fail. This textbook is terrible.
It only cost me $50 brand new, but that was the stone age. Like him, I have now found guilt free ways ways to one up the youngsters.
I have an electronic instrument class and the prof speaks in unintellectual Indian accent and have us purchase his equally unreadable customized version of his text book that cost $299!!
It's a blatant rip off which is what I wrote for the book review on Amazon but that guy actually made a complaint on me and have the review removed by Amazon! The book only have 3 reviewes and they all stated his text book is horrible even the example problems couldn't be follow at all!
What's even worst is the fact that guy actually found me in class and told me that his book isn't really that expensive and he try to save us money by having us purchase his text at lower cost and told me he post his chapters online for those that didn't purchase his book (that wasn't mention in the syllabus or in class at all).
I managed to pass his class with a C with help of Wikipedia and Google! Free source is a lot easier to understand than his text book.
Why learn from your mediocre Indian prof when you could learn from the founder of steady-state and transient analysis:
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-lectures-electric-discharges-impulses/d...
And spend $12.00 + Shipping. Spend the other $288 on a good Tektronix.
"in a completely uninteliglble eastern european accent"
This eastern european accent is mandatory to teach any
serious math class...
I fondly remember my calc prof Antoni Zygmund's
lectures on "the romance of the epsilons and the deltas"
-incidentally it is great to see books such as his classic
"Trigonometric Series" showing up online for free.
http://kryakin.org/fs/(Cambridge%20Mathematical%20Library)%20A.%20Zygmund-Trigonometric%20Series,%20Third%20Edition,%20Volume%20I%20&%20II%20Combined%20(Cambridge%20Mathematical%20Library)-Cambridge%20University%20Press%20(2002).pdf
I am going to read this because you suggest, but in the very first chapter in the very first paragraph it opens with the "imaginary" word for the coil of a sine wave and vectors of it.
Go play a FPS online with the kids today, they can comprehend meta on meta on meta. (more than 4 dimentions in a 3D context and it is all real) It just can't be printed on 2D paper for prefessors emiterous of 9/11 physics to sell text books.
Damn, downloaded it, checked the version and had to wipe it.
It does not appear to be in the public domain. $124.99 at http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/mathematics/abstract-analy...
Do NOT cross the US border with this download on a electronic device.
Copy it to an external drive and then leave at home.
You don't lug around your hardcover library, do you?
I have purchased many books, second hand....especially Math, Engineering, Physics, and Theology Texts. And then I concentrate on rarities and collectables.
Copies made for resale is PIRATING. Copies downloaded for personal use is NOT PIRACY.
If it is in the Public Domain, and Cambridge did not shut the host down, then it is PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Similar to cancer drugs,
textbooks will only be affordable by rich
Fools and their [fiat] money are soon parted.
Indoctrination is expensive. Make the fools pay for it up-front. At least, that's what THEY are thinking. Us ordinary folks know we're being ripped off, both by the price of the book, and the contents. Especially business and economics. Such a sad situation for all concerned.
Virtually all college and other educational level
courses could--and should--be taught using
online material from Kahn Academy --- for FREE
Khan Academy now has some 4800++ educatonal
step-by-step videos, as well as an excellent study method
https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk
And to my knowledge, textbooks are not available on Kindle either ,.... How about that for being "Eco-friendly" as we'll as the stupidity of making kids carry around pounds of books in their backpacks ...
It's amazing what this TV educated population will do or pay to avoid having to think for themselves.
College text books are a sanctioned scam by the proffesor against the student.
College text books are a sanctioned scam by the proffesor against the student.
Unfortunately human knowlege has not advanced 1000%.
Just imagine what would happen to the "Big Publishing" industry if text boks became digital. There is no way that they could ever maintain profits and control of their material as with printed books.
Their profits would be decimated in a fairly short timeframe, since students would pirate copies like there is no tomorrow, so the industry is at th eend of its pitiful rope and are hanging on to dear life -- waiting in horror, until the publishing industry truly becomes disrupted digitally.
Then their gravy train on biscuit wheels will be off the fuckin' rails once and for all.
Publishers have already begun to have sme material in Hardcover books only available online...If you PAY fr the book then there is one, and only one, allocated account, with an encrypted passwaord, that allows the initial student access to that material. The books have NO RESALE VALUE.
Furthermore there are tutorials and material that is assigned by the professor only accessible on that account and is requirrd for the grade.
I have seen this happen TWICE already, as a result of tutoring my niece in both College Algebra and College Chemistry.
The irony of high book prices is that any course and major that actually is job related like engineering and accounting, the book information is as useless as the lecture material.
The dirty little secret about college testing is that the tests are taken from a third source that no one knows about and the best source are old tests from that same instructor.
No one talks about this hoax for fear of being called stupid. You can't be a doctor, dentist or veterinarian no matter how hard you study. Those jobs are reserved for foreigners. Ever noticed how many foreigners are doctors, dentists or veterinarians. Close to half.
Our hidden rulers reserve engineering and accounting for the smartest that study old tests. The books and lectures are a waste of time. Besides college knowledge is a colossal hoax and of little benefit on the job.
Universities are just taking advantage of the certification monopoly that was given it from government that it doesn't deserve.
College knowledge is a hoax. BTW so are Big Pharma drugs that mask symptoms, never cure and burden your liver with a foreign, poisonous synthetic shemical.
The school systems WORLDWIDE are obsolete. College campuses are OBSOLETE.