The average student spends enough money on textbooks in one year to buy 229 boxes of cereal or 8,000 packages of Ramen Noodles.

American students spend over $800 a year on books and supplies, according to the Government Accountability Office. Textbook costs have been rising at double the rate of inflation for two decades, according to a report by the GAO, almost tripling from 1986 to 2004. The cost of tuition has been rising even faster.

Most BYU-Idaho students spend over $300 a semester on textbooks, according to a Scroll survey of 105 BYU-I students. Ten percent of students spend more than $500.

Of the students surveyed, 98 percent think textbook prices are too high, and most professors interviewed for this story agreed.

“I think it’s ridiculous how much textbooks [cost],” said Devin Phillips a sophomore from Idaho Falls.

“Textbooks are expensive,” said Rick Hirschi, an economics professor, but he suggested students consider the relative costs. Tuition, housing and the inherent cost in not being able to work full-time cost much more than even the heaviest load of student textbooks.

The price of textbooks is based on simple economics, said J. Bruce Hildebrand from McGraw-Hill textbook publisher. Textbooks are expensive to produce, and there is a very small market, Hildebrand said.

“It’s not uncommon for us to invest $1 million in developing a new college textbook,” said David Hakensen from Pearson Education. “A best seller in the academic market is a book that sells about 40,000 copies.”

Textbooks may be expensive, but many professors feel they are critical to learning.

For Grover Wray, chair of the Sociology and Social Work Department, textbooks are an essential part of his classes. “Books are important. I use them. I’ll keep using them,” Wray said.

Wray uses technology too. Wray had a textbook representative come to his class and show students how to use the additional materials provided with the textbook.

Now Wray uses online quizzes and case studies provided by the publisher, and the students have access to a digital library of research materials.

These tools raise the textbook cost by about $15, but Wray said the long-term benefits are worth the price increase.

The administration is in the conversation stage to help faculty create curriculum materials that will help “break out of the [idea] that we are bound by a textbook,” said Max Checketts, academic vice-president of BYU-I.

“The textbook is only as important as the instructor makes it,” said Doug Mason, manager of the BYU-I Bookstore.