Education does not come cheap neither do prof salaries.
Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul C Bernhardt" <pcbernha...@frostburg.edu>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)"
<tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu>
Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2010 2:23 AM
Subject: [tips] Warning: Rant: $180!!!!!
Excuse this rant. I know it isn't news, but textbook prices are out of
control.
Out of curiosity, I checked at the bookstore for how much my students will
have to pay for a copy of the text I've selected for one of my courses.
$180.00 (new)
That's not right. It is also about $50 more than I thought students would
suffer for it (which is still too much).
They can get it for just under $140 on Amazon and Textbooks.com. I'm still
appalled.
Looking at the books for the other classes I'm teaching.. $174.00
For another class in which I'm using trade paperbacks, $23 and $17 (two
books required, prices for new copies). No issue with those prices, of
course.
But, it puts the textbook prices in sharp contrast: is a textbook really
something that requires between 6 and 10 times the price?
I think it is (past) time for faculty to assert the control we have over
this process. I am going to pick a new book for I/O for the Spring. I will
make sure that I specify that students can use previous editions of the
book. I know the publishers try to pull the old editions out of circulation,
but they are still out there and do cost a lot less.
When I teach the class requiring the $174 book next fall I'm going to allow
the previous edition. You may recall my describing that I was not going to
allow the previous edition for this book a few months back. But, with
publishers selling individual chapters to students, they will spend much
less to buy a new copy of the previous edition and simply buy that chapter
from the publisher for an inflated price.
For the stats class with the $180 book, same thing, but there is also a
possibility to use Wikibooks. A fully developed stats book sits there.
Whether it can be used for a behavior sciences stats course is another
question. Flatworldknowledge.com is another model by which students can get
free and greatly reduced price textbooks, though no stats book there, yet.
How many of us check how much students get charged for the books we require?
What solutions are we seeking? What more can we do?
Paul C. Bernhardt
Department of Psychology
Frostburg State University
Frostburg, Maryland
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