Here’s a message to the sick and injured across the country complaining about the skyrocketing cost of health care in the United States, or simply to those who are still swimming in the ocean of self-pity over the loss of the Obamacare debate:
At least you don’t have to pay for college textbooks.
Many out in the real world believe that health care is the fastest rising cost to Americans; however, these people are adults and, for the most part, do not have to foot the bill for massive tomes that are only useful two to four days a year – depending on the number of exams one has.
When students are shelling out more than $1,000 annually, according to the College Board, they should be expecting more than just 1,200 pages on thermodynamics.
Since 1978, textbook costs have blown through the roof, the atmosphere and whatever else there is after that – I never took geography, or is that astrology?
Prices have risen an astonishing 812 percent over the 36-year period, dwarfing the meager 575 percent rise in medical service costs over the same span, according to The Huffington Post.
Since 2001 alone, the cost of our textbooks has doubled while prices of recreational books have fallen, according to Bloomberg.
Publishers, of course, have their own reasons to why it has become eight times more expensive to print books since the ’70s. They argue that three to five years of work goes into the current volumes, and, in some cases, the process can take more than a decade.
In 2008, the National Association of Collegiate Stores released data that showed for every dollar spent on a textbook, 77.4 cents go straight to the publisher. Conveniently for them, this data has not been released in the past six years.
At 77 cents on the dollar, the real investment students are making is to the companies that produce the textbooks, not the actual writers, who make 11.7 cents for every dollar.
Does this sound like a bit of a racket? No. It sounds like the largest, unrecognized and unchallenged racket that currently exists.
That is, again, where the publishers come in. They claim that in this modern era – I remind the reader that we’re talking about books – teachers are opting for more expensive options like companion compact discs and internet codes meant to supplement students’ reading with a technology-based component.
That’s correct. The reason we are paying exorbitant prices for our books is for those God-awful online subscriptions we get that are practically the bane of every math and science student’s existence. I once took a chemistry course and never will again because of two words: Mastering Chemistry.
But, at least from the perspective of many faculty members, this is a price worth paying. After all, if you actually sat down and read that textbook, there’s probably a lot you could learn from it.
This is not Harvard, though. Our students do not come to the bayou to seek educational enlightenment nearly as much as they do to seek a 13-win football season.
Many of us would be happy to shun the technology and pick up cheap, black and white books to learn from.
Maybe in next year’s edition.
Eli Haddow is a 21-year-old English and history junior from New Orleans.