The High Cost of Text

Note: This blog post will be cut significantly before being published. I am at nearly 1000 words, where the limit should really be 600 something. But as the author, I am having a difficult time deciding what needs to go. I will speak with my editor, but this is my article in its full, unedited glory. Check the edited version in an upcoming Evergreen, shoots!

    Emails have replaced letters. Text messaging is used more than phone calls. We no longer purchase CDs, but obtain them through the internet in various methods. We spend more time streaming videos off YouTube and other sites than we spend in front of a television. Typical newspaper classified advertisements are far outnumbered by the listings on sites such as Craigslist. We are in the midst of a technological revolution, and it’s time we being this change to the realm of which college students are vocal, but previously powerless to do anything about. It’s time we shake up the textbook industry and develop alternatives to killing trees and our checking accounts.

    The current situation college students are in is quite troubling, based on simple economics. There is a significant and inelastic demand for textbooks, which cannot be adequately combated with piracy and secondary markets because they are updated every couple years. Rarely do we see someone with the authority over consumers to buy a product from unregulated and meager vendors, except from our professors. An Evergreen article on the 2nd cited that students spend, on average, nearly $1000 on textbooks in a year. That’s over a quarter of what is typically spent on tuition. Technology was supposed to assist in bringing down costs by bringing the content online. Instead, online material simply complements the traditional text, and costs a significant amount to access, independent of the book. Worse yet, the odds are pretty good that books purchased this semester will not be bought back for the next because a new edition is en route or the bookstore is overstocked with the book in question. To top it off, the access codes are nontransferable and good for the semester only. None of this is the fault of the Bookie or Crimson & Grey; it’s the publishers, who take a cut of nearly two thirds.

    Now, there are obvious ways to ease the cost of traditional textbooks. You could check chegg.com, buy the international version, borrow a sample copy, purchase the electronic version, use the library, or even find out which books are absolutely necessary before shopping. But these methods only place buckets under a leaky roof. We need to repair the water holes. It’s time we change the textbook industry.

    Enter door number one, the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is an e-book reader which has been flying of the virtual shelves of Amazon since its inception a mere 10 months ago. The Kindle is a powerful device, with a high resolution and paper like screen, wireless connectivity, and thin design; it is a wonderful first generation product. Reading text off a machine may seem cumbersome and counterintuitive initially, but so was the idea presented by Apple of storing music in $500 bricks which you could not put music in or out of without the assistance of a computer. An e-book reader cuts out the middle man, the shipping costs, and, theoretically, most of the publishing costs which goes into a typical textbook. Yes, we’ll probably see DRM (digital rights management) on the books, so you can’t transfer books onto your friend’s Kindle, and we’d still see online access codes for a lot of classes, but it’s a step in the right direction. A new version of the Kindle is rumored to be in development with a lower price tag aimed at college students, it would be wonderful if WSU and colleges embraced this format.

    Door number two is even more interesting and potentially staggering. Door number two explores the domain of open source. Imagine if electronic copies of textbooks were available for free and capable of consumption either on a laptop, tablet PC, high resolution phone such as an iPhone, or, preferably, on a Kindle. Maybe there would be advertisements in between chapters to support server and hosting costs, but probably not. If scholars were willing to contribute and donate small amounts of their time in the interest of accessible knowledge, in an environment where information could be modified at a moment’s notice, we could produce high quality text in a controlled environment. Look at the success experienced by Firefox and Wikipedia. We check Wikipedia before we do the Britannica, and most individuals are aware that Firefox is superior to Internet Explorer. Open source is generally the accepted method in producing high quality products with individually low resources.

    Finally, behind door number three, we see what may be the most obvious and effective method in lowering textbook prices: get rid of them. According to The Daily Herald, one Utah Valley State sociology professor has removed textbooks from the curriculum. After requiring his students to buy a nearly $100 textbook, the students couldn’t sell the book back because a new edition was out. Dr. Ron Hammond now assigns reading material from articles and original research found in the library or the web. He also redid all his quizzes and exams because he had no test bank which accompanies textbooks. While the jury is out on the effectiveness for the students academically, it certainly encourages students to develop their research skills and lightens their financial burden. While not feasible in many cases, it would be fascinating to observe if this technique could be implemented in classes in which it is possible. And if embraced by enough instructors, it would transmit a cordial message to the textbook industry that tripling prices in a two decade period is unacceptable.

    Times have changed. If we are truly fed up with the treatment towards students by the textbook industry, we need the assistance of our faculty and administrators. Current solutions such as those proposed by ASWSU in making buy-back easier just add another bucket under the increasingly leaky and deteriorating roof. What wasn’t possible a few years ago is on the horizon. The only question is, will WSU lead the drive to innovation, or will we follow other universities as we transition from physical text to the digital.