Those of y’all who know me know that I’m about as much a fan of capitalism as anyone. Big businesses, greed, profits, screwing the little guy—I’m all for it. But there’s one instance in which greedy corporations have managed to screw over poor consumers in ways that should be simply untenable. What am I talking about? College textbooks.
I’m actually even more bothered by the problem now that I’m a college instructor than I was as a student. I had TOPS stipends or grad school assistantships to pay for my textbooks; I got to keep the remainder, so I had an incentive to buy books for as little as possible, but the sting of spending $250 or more for a semester’s worth of books is greatly lessened when you’re getting help to pay for them. But as an instructor, I don’t want to force overpriced textbooks upon students who may or may not be able to easily afford the books.
Right now I’m teaching a mythology class. I had been a TA for a class a few years back and we used Morford and Lenardon’s Classical Mythology (8th edition). It was a good book, I was familiar with it, and it was my first time teaching a mythology class, so I went with it. Sure, I gritted my teeth a little bit at the fact that my students would have to pay $70 or so for it, but c’est la vie. I used it, it worked well, and I’d certainly recommend it if the cost isn’t a problem. Unfortunately, the cost is a problem. I’m teaching the same mythology class during the summer, and I was debating whether or not to use the textbook. I go to look it up on amazon and see that there’s now a ninth edition, which came out in February 2010. The eighth edition came out in 2007. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that enough changed in the study of a field that goes back two thousand years to necessitate a new edition just three years after the preceding one. The sole reason is money. Continue reading ‘the textbook racket’