Textbook Price-Fixing Questioned

South Carolina’s The State ran an opinion piece this week about the growing concern over rising textbook prices. The article mentions proposed legislation that would investigate the pricing of textbooks in the United States. As covered earlier, students’ alarm over book prices by is becoming comparable to seniors’ focus on prescription drug prices.

August 6, 2004 by Uncategorized 5

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5 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:
    August 6, 2004 at 5:30 am

    firsta-you-get-the-books
    Movie (and other) references

        + “Scarface”
            – Homer with Spanish accent: “First you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women” just like Al Pacino Homer

    I guess that would apply to books as well!

    Reply
  2. Bibliofuture says:
    August 6, 2004 at 5:44 am

    Solution
    One solution is open source textbooks. Have the students create the textbooks and each year you improve on them. I beat students would learn more making textbooks than reading them.

    Reply
  3. mdoneil says:
    August 6, 2004 at 6:39 am

    Re:Solution
    That raises the question of authority. I want authoratative textbooks not something created by students.

    I remember the Katz Intro to Reference vols 1 & 2 were about $90 but they are worth it. If some recent MLS grads wrote them they would not be.

    Reply
  4. Bibliofuture says:
    August 6, 2004 at 9:30 am

    Re:Solution
    The students would learn by improving the textbooks that they were using. If students create they will get more out of the process.

    Reply
  5. mdoneil says:
    August 6, 2004 at 11:59 am

    Re:Solution
    How can someone who has just learned something improve upon a textbook written by someone who has decades of experience? Authority stems from the author’s experience and knowledge.

    I doubt any textbook I write on reference would be as valuable as Katz books- even if I used Katz as a model.

    However any nursing textbook I wrote would be far more useful than a new nursing graduates book as I have been a nurse for more than a decade.

    That is not to say that you are not correct in that students would learn a great deal by composing the textbooks, but few would adopt them if they were written by students.

    Something similar has happened locally with an instructor at St. Petersburg College with a CISCO CCNA book. The books from Cisco are quite expensive so he wrote another book that is indeed open source. However as he is an experienced instructor and worked as a Cisco CCIE for many years thus giving the text authority.

    I think your idea is wonderful, unfortunately it is somewhat impractical for many fields.

    Reply

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