Cashing in or cashing out?
Legislators and faculty seek solutions to high textbook costs
- posted: 30 Oct. 2007
- scrollcampus@byui.edu
“How in the world does a book so small cost so much?”
“I can’t believe I just spent $150 on one book.”
Sentiments like this can be heard across campus as students purchase textbooks for classes. Books and supplies represent a significant portion of the cost of education at BYU-Idaho. While administrators have fought to keep tuition low, textbook prices are still comparable to other universities.
The cost of textbooks has become an increasing source of dissension among students, administrators and legislators nationwide in recent years. Legislation seeking to lower textbook costs has been introduced in several states, and a federal bill, the College Textbook Affordability Act of 2007, has been proposed.
These initiatives stress greater communication between publishers, institutions and faculty, and would require significant changes in the way textbook information is transmitted to buyers.
But while state commissions and grassroots efforts by students to lower textbook prices have spread across the country, some feel that education, not legislation, is the key to cutting costs.
According to Acumen, a newsletter produced nationally and distributed by the BYU-Idaho Bookstore, economic market forces will provide sufficient control of textbook prices. Instead of focusing on communication of prices and options, “legislators and administrators should encourage publishers to limit the release of new editions … and bookstores to become even better student advocates in helping to control costs,” Acumen reads.
Right here on campus
The BYU-I bookstore has sought to lower the cost of textbooks by using book buybacks and stocking more used books for students to purchase at reduced prices.
More recently, the bookstore has begun to stock electronic books (e-books) for select courses, but officials say that the new book technology has not caught on as much as they would have expected.
“Students aren’t ready for it,” said Caryn Esplin, a professor in the Department of Communication. “Reading on a computer screen is not comfortable to us yet.”
Esplin created and tested an e-book for one of her courses, but found that only one in ten of her students would be interested in buying more e-books, even if they represented a significant financial savings.
All across America
Nationwide resistance to e-books has surprised many who expected the technology to catch on with the more tech-savvy generation that has entered college in the past several years.
“E-books seem simultaneously dead and the wave of the future,” said John Mutter, editor of Shelf Awareness, a publication dedicated to the book trade.
One setback is the fact that most students prefer the portability and familiarity of having a paper book.
“When it’s not in your hands, when you can’t feel and flip the pages, it makes it harder for visual learners to connect with it,” Esplin said.
The deciding factor
Problems with e-book technology are represented in the number of BYU-I students interested in purchasing them. Only 20 e-books were bought for use this semester, discouraging book buyers to get more in stock.
“We are responsive to what the students want,” said Chesley Blackham, senior buyer for the BYU-I bookstore. “But students haven’t shown that they do want e-books.”
Blackham pointed out that while the initial purchase of an e-book may be lower than that of a traditional textbook, it ends up being more expensive because time limits on the software’s use don’t allow the bookstore to buy the e-book back.
“I look at it as an option, not a replacement,” Blackham said. 
