Page 65 - Crisis in Higher Education

Underlying Problem • 39

2. If fees are intended to offer services for students, students must have
more say in their enactment, amount, and use.
3. There must be a clear distinction between tuition, which should be
spent for things that are related to and essential for learning, and stu-
dent fees, which may be useful but not required for learning. Recreation
facilities and intramural sports, which are supported by student fees,
may be relaxing and relieve stress, but requiring students to pay for
these denies them the options to spend their money on other things.
For example, downloading music or engaging in yoga may be more
effective for improving their mental attitude and enhancing learning.

2.4 COST OF TEXTBOOKS AND LEARNING TOOLS

For decades, textbooks have been a primary learning tool. They are usually
authored by tenured faculty and published by companies that specialize in
or have parts of their organization that specialize in textbooks. Over time,
these books have become very expensive. As an example, a new hardbound
copy of College Algebra by Beecher and Penna, 5th edition, is listed online at
Amazon.com for $204.05; Managerial Economic by Samuelson and Marks,
8th edition, is listed for $187.62; and Operations Management by Krajewski
and Malhotra, 11th edition, is listed for $290.70. For textbooks, produc-
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tion costs are both very high and fixed whereas sales volumes are low com-
pared to traditional markets for books like novels and biographies. As a
result, textbooks must cover these high fixed costs with low sales volumes,
which lead to high prices and limited economies of scale. The last textbook
in the example is substantially more expensive than the other two because
it fills the need of an even smaller market. (As an aside, textbook authors
earn a small commission per book, typically 15% of the price paid to the
publisher by the bookseller, which is substantially less than the retail price.)
If students take four or five courses each term, they could pay $700 to more
than $1,000 each semester for new books. The costs per book in the 1960s
would have been about $10 each with an entire term costing about $50. 7
These specific examples are buttressed by data showing that prices for text-
books have grown much faster than inflation. Between 2003 and 2013, the
increase in prices was 79.4%, almost matching the increase in tuition, which
is listed in Figure 2.1 at 79.5%. The bottom line is that textbook inflation is
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about three times more than inflation measured by the CPI, which was 26.7%. 9