Textbook Tango

The first element of this problem is the prices per se. Books that cost between five and ten dollars (for the big suckers) to manufacture are being sold to us for sixty and eighty dollars, or even more; even volumes that are basically just glorified pamphlets have sticker prices of between fifteen and twenty dollars. I'd like to assume that the Co-op isn't ripping us off with outrageous markups - although I'd also like to see them open their books so we can see what that markup is - so the culpability seems to land on the textbook publishers. How do they justify a ratio of cost-of-production-to-wholesale-price ten to fifty times what we pay for bestselling fiction?

The second element of the problem-and the one we have at least a bit more control over-is the faculty. In only three semesters at Oberlin I have already had it up to here (picture hand resting on top of head) with professors who assign sixty or eighty dollars worth of "supplemental reading" on top of the grossly overpriced primary textbook-apparently without losing a minute's sleep. What's worse, they also seem to lose no sleep when the class schedule goes down the tubes and they don't even get to one or more of those "supplementary texts," or end up just using one or two chapters. We also have instructors who order us to buy a new edition of a standard text because of a half-dozen (or fewer...) minor changes or additions - not only forcing us to pay full price, but keeping our fellow students from recouping some of their costs by reselling the older edition. Why not just hand out mimeographed errata and addenda sheets for the previous edition? I mean, how much do they really change from edition to edition?

I have big news for our beloved faculty members: we... are... NOT... made... of... money! Yeah, I know it "costs" over thirty thou a year to attend Oberlin. But how many families are actually coming up with that kind of dough? With each succeeding year more and more students require more and more financial aid to come here, and if financial aid even takes into account a non-fixed cost like textbooks (which it probably does only in extreme circumstances), it's calculated on that absurdly outdated figure of $575 a year for books that is still being reprinted in the viewbook and bulletin. Get real! Many of us consider ourselves lucky to get out of the Co-op for less than $575 a semester! I'm really fed up with instructors who just throw up their hands with a helpless "I don't set the prices" when students complain about the costs of the textbooks assigned. No, you don't set the prices - but you do have a pretty good idea of what the price is going to be when you order it/them. Of course you want to order the best book for the material to be covered, but that has to be tempered by economic reality. The only defense we as consumers have against outrageous prices is to refuse to buy a product. That's basic capitalism. But in this particular milieu that "right" is taken away from us by professors who say "Buy this book or flunk the course!"

I've gotta be honest with you. If this book is really worth $80 in knowledge and information, what do we need you for? If you're as good a teacher as Oberlin claims you are, why do we need an $80 textbook to supplement your lectures? If we need that much information above and beyond what you tell us in class, it sounds like you've bitten off too big a topic for the course, and ought to give some serious thought to further subdividing the subject matter.

The bottom line is that this whole process has gotten astronomically out of hand. Students' parents should not have to sell internal organs to buy their children's textbooks, nor should independent students be forced to rob gas stations to pay their bookstore bills. (I think it might be an Honor Code violation of some sort...) Over the years Oberlin College has taken the lead in many social issues. Let "Ridiculously Expensive Textbook Liberation" start here, too!

-Mary Margaret Towey is a college sophomore.