Books continue to be huge expense for post-secondary students
Posted September 3, 2015 10:46 pm.
Last Updated September 3, 2015 10:48 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – First year university and college students are about to get the shock of their lives when they discover how much they will have to spend on textbooks.
They can cut corners when it comes to accommodation, transportation and course supplies, but it seems books still have to be bought in a store, brand new.
And a single book can cost hundreds of dollars.
“I can’t stress this enough. It’s profit on the part of the people publishing these books,” says Steven Beasley who is with the Canadian Federation of Students and is a grad student himself.
He says publishers make money by making even one-year-old textbooks appear out of date.
“The publishers are creating new editions, and that forces people to buy new books. You see people just throwing away these used textbooks. They are perfectly good textbooks. They have lots of useful information. They are being thrown away because the publisher has moved the pictures around.”
Professors are compelled to tell their students to buy the newest edition, rather than pick up a used one, because of minor changes.
Beasley points out publishing companies make most of their money on first- and second-year textbooks, used by the biggest numbers of students.
“The publishing houses do make the lion’s share of the money. Certainly the money isn’t flowing to the professors, the people who are writing the books.”
Online books are just as expensive, because of their digital locks.
What about photocopying? That’s discouraged by colleges and universities.
Beasley says really cash-strapped students can agree to buy a book together and share it, but he says then access to that information is limited.
He also notes an increasing cost for post-secondary institutions are licencing fees, where the institution pays copyright owners for access to certain information. Those fees would come into play, for instance, when a prof refers students to particular readings or instructs them to download information from online publications. According to Beasley, access to information is becoming more restricted, meaning institutions are having to pay for it, and pass on that cost to students.
Not all the news is negative for students, though. Beasley is encouraged by the move toward open source options for students and their instructors. The BC government, for example, is slowly making textbooks available online for free.
