Scary Chart of the Day – College Textbook Inflation
As College Insurrection recently reported, one New Hampshire college is trying to deal with the rising cost of textbooks.
Other colleges may want to follow suit sooner than later if this chart from Professor Mark J. Perry of the American Enterprise Institute is accurate.
According to Dr. Perry, the cost of college textbooks has increased by 812% since 1978.
The chart above shows the percent changes since 1978 for the CPI series “Educational Books and Supplies” (which is mostly college textbooks), the CPI series “Medical Services,” the median price for new homes from the Census Bureau, and the CPI series “All Items.” The 812% increase in the price of college textbooks since 1978 makes the run-up in house prices and housing bubble (and subsequent crash) in the 2000s seem rather inconsequential, and the nine-fold increase in textbook prices also dwarfs the increase in the cost of medical services over the last three decades.
The college textbook bubble and how the “open educational resources” movement is going up against the textbook cartel (The American Enterprise Institute)
Comments
[…] CHART: College Textbook Inflation. […]
The increase in medical services is partially offset by the fact that since 1978, medical services have allowed better outcomes and increased lifespans. That is not true for college textbooks. The quality and value of a college education appears to have gone downhill since 1978. Though the textbooks are not entirely to blame for that slide, they are not blameless, either. Thankfully, with Obamacare, we can expect that medical services will quickly catch up to textbooks in the “paying more for less” category.
The childishness and tastelessness of the textbook in my last course was the major factor in my dropping out. If this was what education means I don’t want it.
Please those profs who are writing online texts to help your students: Don’t get cute. And no unnecessary illustrations please. Please.
Too many professors are writing their own textbooks. When published in relatively small quantities and finished as a hardback, three-color tome on glossy paper, with all the ego-centric accoutrements included, results in an 800-dollar purchase. Because Dr. Strangelove wrote this for “his” class, resale value will be close to nil, especially since he and his publisher make sure it’s updated every year.
In the real world, people who write books largely to stroke their own egos have to publish through what’s know in the trade as the “vanity press”. They pay big bucks for each book and usually give them away, often forcing them on reluctant family and friends as “gifts”. I’ve seen stacks of these at estate sales, garage sales and in dumpsters. However, in the hothouse of academia, they force students to buy these things under the guise of textbooks, perpetuating another disconnect with reality upon a captive population.
I guarantee that if the purveyor of student loans – our Beloved Government – put a cap on textbook costs per course, that the practice would stop overnight. Or revert to, as it was during my college days, when the prof’s textbook was a softbound volume, printed in black and white print on low quality paper with line drawings illustrations. And that was in the days before desktop publishing and the Internet!
Follow the Money.