Textbook Bundling & Customization: Is There Value?

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Information presented by The Reporter, Minnesota State University - Mankato, click here for the full story.

A geography textbook for $70? Biology 100 costs an extra hundred bucks in book fees, and you can't even sell back the book? And don't even think about upper level classes: one book, not even hardcover, that costs almost $80?

The price of textbooks has skyrocketed in recent years, sending college students reeling while their wallets empty. Students have been searching for other methods of purchasing textbooks instead of the local bookstores, but prices remain high across the board, sending some teachers searching for a more cost-effective method.

Professors usually choose the textbooks they use to teach their classes, but certain departments use the same book for all sections of one particular class, usually a general education class.

Example: At Minnesota State University, 349 people were enrolled in Geography 101, a class that satisfies two general education categories and a popular class for first-year students. The textbook for that class, Geosystems, is $90, with a $20 lab manual written by three professors from MSU's geography department. That creates almost $28,000 in textbook fees — not including the lab manual — from MSU's Geography 101 class alone. The lab manual will cost those students close to $7,000.

Geography professor Matthew Longtin, who teaches Geography 101, said, "It's what the department has been using, and it goes along with the departmental lab manual. So I go along with that. They've been using it for multiple generations. I have third and fourth generations sitting on this shelf."

Longtin makes a personal effort to cut costs for students. In his Geography 100 class, he arranged for the Maverick Bookstore to stock an older edition of the class textbook in order for students to buy a cheaper version.

"Instead of requiring a student to spend $105 for a 100-level class, on the new edition (students) can get them for about $55, which I think is more reasonable for the class," Longtin said.

Gerard Aloisio, who teaches the music department's Introduction to Music and Pop Music U.S.A. classes, took matters into his own hands. For several years now, he has been using an alternate version of a textbook to keep costs low for the hundreds of students in his classes each semester. He called the author of the textbook he wanted to use and asked him to produce a stripped-down version that would be less money for students.

"I said, 'I don't care if it has a hard binder, I don't care if it has fancy colors,'" Aloisio said.

What he got for his students was loose-leaf pages of a textbook in black and white, hole-punched, so it could be put in a binder. The cost? $20. The textbook from which the pages are taken costs more than $100.

"It's the way I wanted it," Aloisio said. "What is the purpose of having students hate you before they even take your class?"

Students are also resorting to the Internet. The Web site www.campusbooks.com allows students to search for books and compare prices from more than 10 different booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Classbook.com, Half.com and textbookx.com. The Web site also helps students sell back their books.

On campusbooks.com, Biology, by Raven and Johnson, the book required of all Biology 105 students — of which there are 16 sections and 306 students — was listed by Half.com at $28.49 for a used copy, the lowest price of the nine stores that offered it. The highest price was $90.25 for a new book, listed by abebooks.com. The CSU Barnes & Noble listed the book at $132.90 new, with no used copies. Also required for the class was a $63.35 lab manual.

"It's just not fair," one Biology 105 student said. "We have to pay all this money and we can't even sell back the book."

Some schools have resorted to other measures to reduce textbook costs for their students. The University of Wisconsin-Stout's Instructional Resource Program allows students to rent textbooks and other reusable educational materials from the school's library.

The program is funded completely through fees students are charged when they pay tuition and the selling of old textbooks and fines. Students can pick up their books the first week of school and return them by the end of the semester.

UW-Stout, which has 8,100 undergraduate and graduate students — about 6,000 less than MSU — is one of several colleges to use a textbook rental system to alleviate the financial pressure on students. Other schools that rent textbooks to students include Southeastern Louisiana University and Eastern Illinois University. Larger schools, such as the University of Illinois, are also looking into beginning rental programs.