Harvard, Oh Harvard

As you know, college textbooks cost a lot of money. DUH! Today's Christian Science Monitor has an opinion piece on the issue by David Zhou, a junior at Harvard University. Now I realize the respect afforded the Harvards of the world likely is disproportionate to the level of intellectual rigor one finds there, yet I still expect more from such an institution. It's not that someone at Harvard wrote something I find trivial and jejune (see, I can show off a vocabulary even though I went to a public school in the South), it's that someone somewhere thought this writing was worthy of being circulated to the country as a whole via the national media. It'd be one thing if this were the level of writing in the student newspaper, but this made it into the Christian Science Monitor (no mean feat, I presume). To me that suggests that this piece is among the better writing samples produced by undergraduates at Harvard. That, my friends, is what troubles me.

Are textbooks too expensive? I won't even get into the economic aspects of this argument. I'll grant the point that textbooks are too expensive. What next? Of course the question, "Why?" The easy answer (and the one chosen by Mr. Zhou) -- those evil textbook publishers! Mr. Zhou uses anecdotes (a friend bought the international edition for 60% of what I paid) and personal opinions (publishers are actively working to keep prices in the stratosphere) to reach his final conclusion: book publishers must be stopped!

What frightens me most are his two solutions:

1. Congress has yet to take any concrete steps toward change.
2. Publishers clearly possess the power to bring prices down. They could stop churning out new editions and toss out the gimmicks - or make them optional - but apparently they'd rather gouge students ...

I hesitate to think of the federal government getting involved in the textbook game. Has Mr. Zhou been paying attention to the whole evolution vs. ID debate? Secondly, why does he think publishers would ever want to "bring prices down"? Yes, in certain cases it is in their interest to push a low price book (elasticity anyone?), but why does he think publishers would EVER pursue such a strategy on an industry-wide basis? The answer, of course, is that he doesn't, but nothing in the piece is about thinking or reacting logically. It is simply a rant at the evil publishing industry.

Don't get me wrong, I do think there are massive rents being collected in the textbook industry. Part of the blame does lie with publishers. They do love those new editions every couple of years. As a nomination for most bizarre rationalization ever, I once heard Pat Schroeder (yep, that Pat Schroeder), CEO of the Association of American Publishers, explain in an NPR interview just why we need all those new editions. This is paraphrasing, but she said something like:

We've found that once an edition is used for 4 or 5 semesters (2 or 2.5 years), then the answers to the problems at the end of the chapters start getting passed around and then everyone starts making A's in the classes.

That has to be the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard. I've been teaching for years and I've never seen this problem. The only way I can see this as a valid argument would be if the professor made homework from the book worth some ungodly percentage of the overall grade. Secondly, most new editions (that I've looked at) don't even change the chapter problems!

Still, textbooks are expensive, so let's think about solutions. Yes, government intervention and voluntary profit reductions by the industry are possible solutions, but I think we can do better. Who else has power in this situation? Instructors and students. I know that at two of the schools I've taught at, we coordinated our textbook selection so that students could buy one overpriced book for both principles rather than one for each section. Further, I've asked about this issue and some book reps have given me cheaper versions of some texts that do what Mr. Zhou asks. They cut down on the bells and whistles in standard texts. There aren't as many graphics, not as much color, fewer end-of-chapter questions and problems, etc. So if instructors would take the lead by adopting such texts, that would help Mr. Zhou. Secondly, students themselves can play a role. Many of my students now contact me before the semester begins to ask for the ISBN number for our text so they can try to track one down off Amazon or ecampus or ... Evidently, though, Mr. Zhou is too busy to invest his time and effort in something like this.

No, I suspect that Mr. Zhou just wanted to rant a bit about high book prices and spew some vitriol at publishers. If he's really interested in bringing down textbook prices, he should think about options that might really have an impact. Until he decides to get down from his high horse, though, it's likely he'll simply "continue to dread [his] trips to the bookstore."

P.S. Sorry for the rant above, but there's one more little thing. Now from my brief sojourn in (high school) journalism, I know that headlines often are not penned by the writer of the piece. Still, I loved the headline for Mr. Zhou's commentary -- College textbook prices are unfair and unnecessary. Unfair? Yes, in his opinion. Unnecessary? I saw no support for that in his piece.

Oh, Harvard, what hath thou wrought?