College Textbook Case: a Captive Audience

Re “Price of College Textbooks Faulted,” Jan. 30: My wife and I, two retired teachers, fully agree with the conclusion reached by the California Student Public Interest Research Group: Students are being “ripped off” by textbook publishers. As two senior citizens supporting an engineering student at Cal State Northridge, we have experienced firsthand the explosion in textbook costs. Our costs for the spring semester highlight the situation: $1,200 for tuition, $330 for textbooks.

A suggestion: If the CSU and the University of California systems can’t negotiate lower costs, given their assumed bulk purchasing power, then hire the Wal-Mart buyers. However they do it, they get the best prices, thereby benefiting their customers. At a time when tuition costs alone are expected to rise 10% per year, textbook prices should be constrained. That would surely help our checkbook.

Robert Livingston

Northridge

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As a college instructor, I must decide which texts to use for my classes. Often I have many options, but if one textbook costs even a few dollars less than its competition without compromising quality, I will use that book.

The consolidation of most of the textbook industry under three publishing conglomerates has resulted in a smaller body of texts with a higher average cost.

What the textbook market needs now is a bare-bones publisher willing to work with qualified faculty to produce a line of strong, clear, inexpensive textbooks for students on budgets.

Andrew Purvis

Ontario

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I am an international student at UC Irvine. Because of recent tuition increases, my cost of education has risen drastically. The textbook publishers not only make my life more miserable by driving up the textbook prices but also keep me from reselling used textbooks by changing editions frequently. I spent $421.39 on textbooks last quarter. And I bought only five.

Man-Hing Li

Irvine