Our Wallets in Their Hands

In an editorial last February, the Crimson Staff criticized Malkin Professor of Public Policy Robert D. Putnam for his outlandishly priced $464.50 coursepack. Going back to the drawing board, Putnam instructed his assistants compiling next year’s coursepack to scour Harvard’s electronic resources. The result? After a few weeks of effort, the same 1000 page coursepack is now priced under $200. If only other professors would catch on.

Course materials are getting more expensive. Over the last two decades, a Government Accountability Office study found that textbook prices have risen at double the rate of inflation. The situation is so out-of-control that Senator Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., has introduced legislation to help defray some of the $898 a year on average that students shell out for textbooks.

Closer to home, textbooks’ soft-cover cousins aren’t getting any cheaper either. Coursepacks that Harvard Printing and Publication Services (HPPS) used to handle are now being farmed out to XanEdu, a for-profit printer, and sold at the Harvard Coop. The extra distribution costs plus the Coop’s markup can only mean higher prices for students (then again, HPPS’s abrupt departure from the coursepack printing business means their low prices must have been to some extent financially unsustainable).

The high cost of textbooks and coursepacks can be blamed on a number of factors. Textbooks include more and more extras every year, like CD-ROMs and accompanying websites, which raise their cost. Fully 80 percent of the textbook market is controlled by just five publishers, limiting competition and driving prices up as high as students can bear. Furthermore, the very people who choose textbooks, namely professors, don’t bear their cost, providing them with little incentive to consider price as part of the academic equation. Though bells and whistles aren’t an issue, coursepack prices, too, suffer from the last two factors. What to do? The College could investigate the Law School’s strategy, which includes course materials in the cost of tuition, driving tuition up but giving the Law School an incentive to help keep costs down. But before the College, or Congress, can come to students’ rescue, we will continue to suffer from ever higher textbook and coursepack prices. Until comprehensive action can be taken at any level, professors and teaching fellows (TFs) must learn to balance cost and content to help students afford their courses.

They clearly have a lot to learn. Students taking Moral Reasoning 28, taught by Buttenweiser University Professor Stanley Hoffman, will have to produce $227.25 before walking away with a copy of the coursepack (not to mention hundreds of dollars more to purchase the 14 additional required books for the course). The price of this coursepack is especially maddening considering many articles it contains, like Jessica Stern’s “The Protean Enemy,” are available for free through Harvard’s e-resources. Another Core, Historical Studies B-64, has a coursepack which will cost students $172. The cost of the coursepack and the next two most expensive books, when bought at the Coop, is $302. Most distressing, though, has to be the Ec 10 “package deal” that the Coop is offering. One hundred and forty-nine dollars gets you a new textbook and new coursepack, wrapped together. Separately, the coursepack is $66 and the used textbook $111. In this case, the Coop’s vaunted efforts to save students money with used textbooks ring hollow in the face of the inflated coursepack price.

The success that Robert Putnam has had in reducing the price of his coursepack suggests that, with some effort, TFs and professors could save students substantial amounts of money. There are a number of simple ways that coursepacks can be made cheaper. Harvard already pays huge sums for copyrights on its online resources. Professors who incur copyright costs by including in their coursepacks newspaper or journal articles (almost invariably available through e-resources) can save students money simply by linking to the articles. And more than just articles are available online. Last year, Environmental Science and Public Policy 10 did without printed coursepacks, posting all required readings on the course website.

Professors can also help defray the rising costs of textbooks. Professors help keep textbook prices high by requiring students to carry the most recent editions and by changing textbooks wholesale when taking over a course. New editions and new textbooks destroy the used textbook market, even though new editions often do little more than change page numbers to render previous editions obsolete. Professors must make their courses compatible with the current and previous editions of textbooks to save students money, even for courses that draw their problem sets from the texts. And new professors must weigh carefully the benefits of switching textbooks.

Professors should also post syllabi (or at least reading lists) earlier. This will allow students to search for cheaper alternatives online and in the used markets before classes start. Case in point: the syllabus and reading list for History 10a were posted the first day of class, leaving students scrambling to the nearest, and most expensive, book merchants to fill up their shelves. Submitting reading lists earlier could even help the Coop keep prices lower by allowing longer lead times for its staff to negotiate with distributors and to buy back books from students.

To help in this complicated endeavor, a page should be added to the already excellent Harvard Libraries e-resources website explaining the many ways TFs and professors can use the vast resources Harvard already owns to lower costs for its students. Course heads shouldn’t have to rely on anecdotes for cost-cutting tips.

Of course, professors are not ultimately to blame for the outrageous prices of course materials today. And though the Coop seemingly has room to improve a few coursepack prices, the store actually makes its lowest margins on textbooks. Those really to blame for high textbook prices, textbook publishers, face only as much pressure to lower prices as students and professors can exert. This situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. However, through some of the simple steps outlined—using e-resources, submitting reading lists earlier, remaining compatible with old editions, and avoiding switching textbooks—professors and TFs can begin to exert this pressure, and save students money in the process. Our community of educated minds must become a community of educated consumers, too.