Hopkins students may find many reasons to be excited about the beginning of the school year, but freshmen, upperclassmen and graduates alike will also dread the start of the term and the high cost of textbooks.
The near unanimous sentiment expressed by Hopkins students interviewed is that the textbooks account for a large portion of school-related expenditures.
"They're a scam instigated by the administration, publishers and retailers" sophomore Rocky Barilla said.
According to a report issued in 2005 by the Government Accountability Office, textbooks and school supplies cost undergraduates on average $900 a year. The price has outpaced inflation twofold since 1986 and continues to increase further.
"Nobody wants to spend all that money on textbooks, but students have to understand that paying for tuition and buying textbooks are the same things; you're paying for your education," Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins employee Paul Lynch said.
Many students blame Barnes & Noble and the publishers for the high and increasingly higher prices of textbooks while publishers place the blame on professors, arguing that they are the ones choosing the books. Professors place publishers at fault for limited choices of textbooks and high retail markups. Retailers such as Barnes and Noble fault both professors and publishers for being indifferent and not listening to student complaints about rising costs of already expensive textbooks.
"We're being held hostage by the relationship between the school administration and the publishers. In online stores, the publication and selling price for books are $100 less compared to how much they sell at Barnes and Noble. They have to help accommodate students with the rising costs of textbooks so they can actually concentrate on learning," sophomore Jason Shapiro said.
Bruce Hildebrand, executive director of Higher Education for the American Association of Publishers, believes that there are mistaken negative assumptions about the textbook publishing industry.
"Textbooks are not mass-market novels. The textbook market is very small, and they're expensive to make. If it costs a lot to make the textbook and you're only selling to a niche market, then you have to charge a lot for each individual textbook. It's simple math and basic business," Hildebrand said.
Many Hopkins students and consumer groups suspect that there's more to the higher prices of textbooks than just basic economics. Many students claim that textbook publishers drive up the prices of their books with frivolous supplements such as CD-ROMs, diagrams and study guides to justify a higher price.
Professors and students share the same sentiments when it comes to the release of newer editions of textbooks. They have been voicing concerns that publishers are releasing new editions of textbooks with little to no updates too frequently.
"There's nothing really new content wise in the textbook. Besides the reshuffling of the same problems in the earlier chapters, the newest edition is essentially the same as the previous edition," Fred Torcaso, a professor of Applied Mathematics, said in reference to the newest edition of Statistical Methods.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), new editions of textbooks are being released every three to four years. In reality, however, consumer groups allege that textbooks are actually being released closer to every two years.
The report stated that the increasing price of textbooks is due to the additional supplements provided by publishers. These supplements can include workbooks, a study guide, online memberships to extra supplement information and software for students and teaching packages such as course plans and lesson guides for professors.
In the GAO Report, publishers argue that the increasing price of textbooks due to the extra supplemental material is justified in that their customers demand it.
"The Barnes & Noble here at Hopkins stifles competition by not releasing ISBN numbers earlier and scrambling titles for textbooks, preventing students from shopping for bargains on textbooks before getting on campus," said Mike Maiale, a sophomore International Studies major.
"It's a complicated issue that stems directly from the professors and the publishers ... If it's anyone's fault, it's not the retailers," Lynch said.
Stephen Drigotas, a psychology professor at Hopkins, asserted that the difference between the prices of textbooks is too small to even consider choosing a less expensive textbook.
"For both professors and students, there aren't many ways to get around it. There are other alternatives professors can use such as internet text-based books and other written material but they're not usually used for introductory-type courses ... There aren't many options for professors to choose from to help students lessen the costs of buying course material because we have to trade off quality of information with cheaper costing books," Drigotas said.
For students willing to put in a little extra work to save some money on textbooks, online retailers such as Half.com and Amazon are now competing with traditional brick and mortal retailers by selling textbooks at lower prices. Some Web sites, such as Facebook and Craigslist, help students trade their books with others students. In some cases, textbooks can be previewed and are available in limited form on online book readers, one of which is Google Books.
But don't expect the price of textbooks to decrease anytime soon.
"The textbook industry is a stuck industry. It's a monopoly," Drigotas said.
