Textbook prices increasing, making college even less affordable

It’s getting more expensive to attend college, and the price of textbooks is part of the problem.

Over the past 10 years, college tuition has increased by 74 percent, with tuition in Alabama increasing by 68 percent. According to the Southern Regional Education Board, a family earning a household income of $50,000 per year would spend about 30 percent of their annual income on tuition, room and board and fees to send one child to college. In 1988, that figure was only 12 percent.

Also piling on the costs are increasing textbook prices.

Between 1986 and 2004, textbook price increased by 186 percent. The rising prices are being attributed to multiple re-editions of textbooks and the inclusion of one-time use workbooks that hamper the resale of books, forcing students to buy new texts. Publishers take the lion’s share of a book’s price, raking in 67 percent. In contrast, the campus bookstore only keeps about 12 percent of the book’s price.

Several states are taking action to help curb rising textbook costs, with some adopting policies requiring greater availability of information about textbook prices, while others are banning payments to instructors from book publishers in exchange for adopting their textbooks.

The federal government has even weighed in. The federal Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 includes provisions to reduce instructional materials costs and make the publishing and selection process for textbooks more transparent.

The act will soon also require publishers to provide faculty members and others selecting textbooks with information for each available book, including the price, publishing dates of the three previous editions, a list of revisions made from each previous edition, and the formats in which each textbook is available, according to the SREB.

Alabama is doing little or nothing with regard to public policy regarding the high price of college textbooks, but individual institutions are trying to combat the problem.

According to Troy University’s Office of University Relations, Troy is pushing an aggressive book buyback program at its campus bookstores, and textbook selection committees are standardizing texts for some classes. For example, instead of letting each English composition professor choose his or her own textbooks, the committee is narrowing the available text selections down to one or two books.

Alan Richard, an SREB spokesperson, said local efforts to deal with the textbook pricing crisis can be effective.

“Many steps toward reducing costs may be left to institutions,” he said. “Our report suggests that colleges and universities can sponsor book buy-back programs, promote book exchanges, implement selection guidelines for faculty and require faculty to use each textbooks edition for multiple, consecutive semesters.”