Skip to main content

College Textbook Prices Have Increased Over 1,000 Percent Since 1977

textbookprice_d7bbb96677a81c69da37daa70391dc73.nbcnews-ux-600-700While reporting on eCampus’s new virtual store earlier today I told you that college students had cut their textbook spending in college bookstores by as much as 23% over the past few years. In perfect serendipity, NBC has published an article that explains part of the reason why:

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.

They’re not wrong, but students aren’t entirely without recourse. As an NPR investigation in 2014 showed us, the average amount students have spent on textbooks plateaued in 2002. Students are now paying only $320 per semester for their textbooks, and they’ve found smart ways to keep the cost down.

Students are more selective in which textbooks they buy, and they’re more inclined to buy online so they can get the lowest price. If the textbook isn’t strictly needed for the class then students tend not to buy them, and they’re also more inclined to sell a textbook back at the end of a semester.

Rising textbook prices are also responsible for the rise of the open source textbook movement, which seeks to replace expensive college and K-12 textbooks with freely licensed versions that can be edited to suit the needs of a specific school or class.

image by wohnai

Similar Articles


Comments


jjj August 3, 2015 um 10:04 pm

Would be interesting if someone would sue the US claiming the higher education system is a human rights violation.

A few quotes from a 2012 OECD report- was too lazy to look for a more recent one
"a number of countries have now surpassed the U.S. in the percentage of younger adults with a tertiary attainment. The U.S. ranks 14th among 37 OECD and G20 countries in the percentage of 25-34 year-olds with higher education, at 42% -above the OECD average (38%), but far behind the leader, Korea (65%).
Although overall tertiary attainment levels in the U.S. have been high for many years and remain well above the OECD average (30%), they are growing at a below-average rate compared to other OECD and G20 countries. For example, between 2000 and 2010, tertiary attainment in the U.S. grew anaverage of 1.3 percentage points a year, compared to 3.7 percentage points annually for OECD countries overall.
These trends are also mirrored in the graduate output of higher education institutions. In 1995, the U.S. ranked 2nd after New Zealand in terms of the higher education graduation rate among 19 OECD countries with comparable data.In 2010, it ranked 13th among 25 countries with comparable data. While the higher education graduation rate in the U.S. grew from 33% to 38% over this period, on average across OECD countries it virtually doubled, from 20% to 39%"
source (13 pages pdf) http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/CN%20-%20United%20States.pdf

You can also see the difference when it comes to low income students.
Anyway, the US is going forward but a lot slower than others so it’s falling behind.
China is also an interesting topic, urbanization is only some 55% vs some 80% in the US and higher education as a % was low while the population is old. Still China is pushing hard and they have some 7.5 million graduates a year now, so China is surpassing the US in total number even if it’s far behind in %. They also got a lot of room to grow as the population shrinks, urbanization continues and higher education gains even more traction.
The saddest part is that pretty much everything is going downhill in the US as politicians lose any trace of honesty. Pick any domain and the stats will show things are not ok.


Student Sold Drugs to Pay for College Textbooks, Police Say | The Digital Reader February 26, 2016 um 11:14 am

[…] the cost of college textbooks having grown faster than inflation, housing, or healthcare, students are struggling to pay this toll on the road to a better […]


Pearson Shares Slump Following Poor Earnings Report | The Digital Reader October 17, 2016 um 8:46 am

[…] of raising textbook prices at rates three times higher than inflation has come back to haunt at least one […]


Textbook Publishers | The Digital Reader June 7, 2017 um 3:22 pm

[…] have been raising textbook prices for so many decades and have driven the price of textbooks so high that they have created a profitable opportunity for […]


Bertelsmann Will Soon Own 75% of Penguin Random House | The Digital Reader July 11, 2017 um 2:07 pm

[…] Pearson's problem is that it is in the same unfortunate position as O'Reilly and other technical publishers: nonfiction books are rapidly becoming redundant to learning in part because the publishers have priced themselves out of their market. […]


No, Institutional Licensing is Not the Solution to Textbook Prices | The Digital Reader July 18, 2017 um 3:27 pm

[…] prices have been rising faster than healthcare for decades. this has inspired the growth in use of open educational resources and even degree programs that […]


Why Textbook Publishers Are Running Scared: Survey Shows College Textbook Spending Dropped 17% Since 2007 | The Digital Reader August 29, 2017 um 12:44 pm

[…] a drop of 17% in a decade where textbook prices increased faster than the cost of […]


Write a Comment