Overview
At the University of Maryland at College Park the average student spends more than $1000 a year on textbooks, about 13% of in-state tuition and half of tuition at an average community college. Textbook prices have increased at four times the rate of inflation since 1994 and continue to rise.
The rising costs of textbooks is not inevitable, and policy solutions exist to make textbooks part of an affordable college education. Publishers produce new editions of textbooks every 3.5 years—even in fields where information hasn’t changed significantly like math and chemistry. New editions prevent faculty and bookstores from re-using the old edition.
Publishers also “bundle” lots of extras with their textbooks—CD-ROMs and workbooks that drive up prices and make books harder to resell.
Professors and college administrations can do a lot to rein in high prices, but more must be done. That is why Maryland PIRG is pushing Congress to require publishers to curb practices that drive up the cost of a college education by passing meaningful legislation by the 2008 elections.
