What's New
The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which advises the Department of Education and Congress on student financial aid policy, has completed a yearlong report to Congress on potential solutions to the problem of skyrocketing college textbook prices. The study was requested by Congressmen David Wu (D-OR) and Buck McKeon (R-CA), part of a follow up to last year’s Government Accountability Office study that confirmed much of the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign’s own research on the problem.
Overview
Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks—20 percent of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college. Textbook prices have increased at four times the rate of inflation since 1994 and continue to rise.
Our research demonstrates that the rising costs of textbooks is not inevitable, and that policy solutions exist to make textbooks part of an affordable college education. Publishers produce new editions of textbooks every 3 and a half years—even in fields where information hasn’t changed significantly like math and chemistry. New editions prevent faculty and bookstores from 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 Congress should require publishers to curb practices that drive up the cost of a college education.
