Forget your New Year's resolution—it's time to gain a few pounds and burn some cash. Yes, textbook-buying season has arrived. It seems all the professors toiled over winter break to revise old editions (change one sentence) just in time for publishers to give new meaning to inflation.
Given the rising cost of textbooks, it hardly makes sense to purchase new ones each semester. Extraordinary prices defy simple economics. Rapid edition turnover flouts environmental responsibility.
A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on textbook prices reached the conclusion that ""enhanced offerings appear to drive recent price increases."" The report found that over the past two decades, rising textbook prices doubled the rate of inflation.
But in blaming ""enhanced offerings"" for rising costs, the report ignores the reality that five publishers control 80 percent of the textbook market. Without price competition, publishers can inflate margins of profit and offer professors substantial bounties.
Moreover, so-called ""enhanced offerings"" (CD-ROMs, bundles, study guides) represent planned obsolescence at its worst—bookstores refuse to reshelf texts with outdated or missing supplements. Students lose money and landfills burst with texts so last semester.
So how can UW-Madison solve the textbook problem?
Two possibilities exist: The university could either create a tuition package that includes the cost of textbooks or the university could implement a rental system.
Last fall, the student government experimented with the latter solution, launching a pilot textbook rental program for three courses. The program required each rental book to remain part of curriculum for a minimum three years and ensured student accountability by refunding $55 of an initial $80 deposit to students who returned books in good condition.
This means students paid only $25 for a text that a bookstore would price up to about $110. But don't rush to your student reps—according to a student government representative, the program is not available for spring 2007.
The feasibility of a rental system at UW-Madison is questionable considering the size of the campus and scope of material covered. It sounds good in theory, but rental programs commonly flourish among small to medium schools and rural, liberal arts or teacher colleges, as concluded in a UW-Milwaukee report.
Seven UW System universities that meet these standards currently offer textbook rentals. If a comprehensive program took root at UW-Madison, it would be the largest textbook-rental system statewide and likely nationwide. The bureaucracy required to manage and inventory books for 40,000-some students would presumably drive up student fees and defeat the purpose of the system itself.
Accessible and affordable textbooks should be a reality, and UW-Madison should consider the former solution: A tuition package that includes the cost of texts. Of course, tuition would rise to accommodate textbook costs—a discomforting reality. But the system would relieve the periphery costs of education and more accurately quantify university expenses. According to the GAO report, textbooks and course supplies alone comprise 26 percent of all student fees, including tuition.
In addition, a new tuition program would make professors accountable to a budget, reduce frivolous new editions and diminish incentives to publish with the big five.
The program would give flexibility to professors who seek to exceed the budget by allowing appeals to administration. It could even benefit publishers who lose profits once texts join the resale and exchange market. Textbook inflation would decelerate and free-market pricing would stabilize.
Ultimately, students would be the beneficiaries of the new tuition program. Texts would re-enter circulation at the end of each semester and spiraling textbook costs would cease. The program would spell the end of complaints over poor buy-back rates and credit reports.
But for now, students, get out your elbows and your checkbooks: Textbook-buying season has arrived.
