On Textbooks (Part I)

Posted Mon Nov 28, 2005 in

Dave Hill has an essay on the price of textbooks. In Dave’s article, he posted a pass-through link from kottke to an article by Surowiecki in the online version of The New Yorker. (That sounds like link-hell, doesn’t it?)

This is a topic worthy of consideration. Surowiecki says:

...But sophisticated means one thing when you’re spending your own money, and another when you’re effectively spending your students’. When professors decide which books to assign, the main consideration, they would say, is quality, not price, so any competition occurs on the basis of features rather than of cost. The G.A.O. report placed much of the blame for soaring prices on what it called “enhanced offerings,” all the CDs and instructional supplements with which textbooks are increasingly bundled—or burdened. When price is no object, professors might as well choose the fanciest textbook around.

Well, maybe so, but I think Surowiecki’s statement is a little sensational and insulting to faculty. He makes it sound like professors and publishers are in collusion to fleece students and I think misses the mark. I’m an academic and have a little to say on the subject. Personally, I don’t give a rip about the “instructional supplements” associated with textbooks; I’m more concerned about my students learning basic material (and I teach relatively advanced subjects to undergraduate and graduate civil engineers). The supplements are typically useless from my perspective. I’d prefer to see textbooks stripped of much of what is offered into a small, sleek package that has just the fundamentals.

You see, I believe that if I can convey the fundamentals of a topic to my students, then I’ve done my job. They will be prepared to practice and they’ll be prepared to continue learning their profession long after I’m gone. But I digress…

As far as I know, faculty receive no compensation for selection of a particular textbook, save a desk copy for their personal use. I resent Surowiecki’s insinuation.

A few idealistic souls have proposed alternatives to the current system. Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School, has proposed that colleges could buy the books; people in the open-source movement have talked of producing free textbooks, the way they currently produce free encyclopedias and free software. But, until the revolution arrives, college students must bear the burden of the high cost of reading. It may be a losing fight as long as professors keep picking texts, but the students are waging it in a surprisingly canny way.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but it appears that Surowiecki implies that because the professor picks the text, that he or she is doing a bad thing. Maybe this is connotation, but the way I read his text, it’s there. I disagree. I’m in a much better position to choose the text for my classes than my students. My students haven’t got a clue what it is that makes the text a good text or a poor text. I do because I have the professional experience to evaluate the contents of the book. My students don’t have the benefit of that experience. They will have it, someday, but they don’t now, when they would need it to choose an appropriate book for class reference.

To sum up, Surowiecki has some good points, but his language casts aspersions on faculty and I resent that. Yes, textbooks are expensive and are becoming more expensive. That there are few companies producing the bulk of textbooks is a concern, but I hardly think there is collusion between companies to inflate the price of books. I’d like to see an accounting of the cost of publication. I suspect that material costs are substantial and the cost of producing the text important too. I certainly don’t think that faculty are fairly compensated for preparation of textbooks given the level of effort and the lifetime of experience and study required to be an authority on a subject. (Put this into the context of an athlete and I think my point is made.)

Furthermore, I resent the implication that professors are scheming with textbook companies to fleece students. It’s much easier to believe (although it might be an unpopular position) that faculty are clueless about book costs, or don’t care about price and want their students to have good quality books instead of less expensive books.

With that, I’m going to bring this article to a close. I have more thoughts on textbooks, but I think I’ll continue those in On Textbooks (Part II).