A number of student and community groups recently filed a complaint with UC President Richard C. Atkinson and California State University Chancellor Charles Reed, stating that textbook costs for undergraduate students are unreasonably high.
The complaint was filed in the shadow of the $1,200 increase in UC tuition fees for the 2003-04 school year. The complaint urges Atkinson and Reed to cut annual student textbook costs by $212 million.
“”I feel like UCSD uses [textbook prices] as another way to rip us off,”” said John Muir College junior Josh Berg. “”I’ve spent $160 for a single textbook before.””
Alissa Nadel, also a junior at Muir, agreed with Berg.
“”Textbooks are way too expensive. You can just go on Amazon.com and they’re much cheaper,”” she said.
Students in the UC system alone spend $180 million annually on textbooks. The average UC student will spend nearly $5,000 on books over four years of UC education, equivalent to a third of students’ overall cost of attending a UC school in the same four years, which is $17,648 in tuition and fees.
Complainants claim that textbook costs can be reduced by 40 percent, resulting in the total reduction of $212 million annually. The average student would therefore save $2,000 on textbooks over a four-year period.
Complainants also claim that UCSD bookstores are not passing savings onto students, but rather keeping the profits for themselves.
The UCSD bookstore, however, claims otherwise.
“”Whenever the UCSD Bookstore can get lower wholesale prices, the savings are passed on to students,”” said John Turk, director of the UCSD Bookstore. “”Many college stores are following the same practice.””
Assistant Director of the UCSD Bookstore Don Moon defended the bookstore’s prices in a submission to the California State Legislature.
“”The UCSD Bookstore is always seeking opportunities to pass textbook savings on to students,”” said Moon in the submission. “”We have instituted several programs to make textbooks more affordable.””
The submission went on to name the methods by which the bookstore is trying to reduce costs, such as the Save a Million campaign, which has saved UCSD students $5 million over the past three years, according to the bookstore.
Other prices, however, are being raised. In early January, the UC Board of Regents approved a $400-per-year tuition increase, along with a second $800 increase for the 2003-04 school year.
John Gamboa, executive director of Greenlining Institute, a minority advocacy group and one of the primary complainants, feels that students are being gouged for more money at one of the worst possible times.
“”Students are facing a $1,200-a-year increase in tuition at the University of California at a time when an increasing number of families are either out of work or facing minimum wage jobs,”” he said.
As a result, the protesters feel that high textbook prices are particularly harmful.
Yet Moon claims in his submission to the State Assembly that “”after expenses, college bookstores make very little money on selling course materials.””
Statistically, college bookstores make just 4.7 cents on every dollar of a textbook price.
Three big publishers, Pearson Education, Thomson Learning and McGraw-Hill, account for 62 percent of all industry sales. The labor department’s measure of wholesale textbook prices increased 65 percent in the past 10 years, while overall producer prices climbed just 11 percent.
Complainants claim that these publishers also constantly raise the prices of new textbooks and issue new editions.
“”I’ve had professors admit that they prefer the older editions,”” Berg said. “”[The publishers] don’t really add anything to the new ones.””
The protesting groups offer several solutions, such as providing Internet alternatives to textbooks with online versions of the text, and asking the universities to distribute their reading lists to private booksellers who are unaffiliated with the university to support competition.
Turk feels that there are already many ways that students can take the initiative to save money on books.
“”The primary way students [can] pay less for textbooks is to shop early and purchase used copies,”” Turk said. “”Students can also save by looking for discounts in the UCSD Bookstore, the General Store, the Revelle Book Exchange or online — and by participating in peer-to-peer textbook exchanges.””
The complainants, however, feel that there is a problem that needs to be solved.
“”We now call upon [Atkinson] to be a leader in addressing the high cost of books, including the big publisher oligopoly that artificially raises wholesale textbook prices,”” Gamboa said.
The complainants desire a meeting with President Atkinson and Chancellor Reed in the next two weeks to discuss the formation of a committee to concentrate on textbook price reduction.
