Pricey pages

In August, Missouri State Auditor Claire McCaskill reported that the cost of attending college in Missouri has outpaced the rate of inflation by about 8 percent since 2000.

However, tuition rates are just one of several factors that have increased the cost of higher education. What McCaskill’s report didn’t mention was one particular expense that has grown more burdensome for students: the price of textbooks, which have risen at twice the rate of inflation over the last decade, according to a 2005 study by the Public Interest Research Group.

Students blame bookstores for excessive profits. Bookstores blame textbook publishers for bundling course materials into more expensive packages. Publishers blame the used-book industry for undercutting their businesses. The used-book industry blames professors for assigning textbooks without considering the expense to students.

Professors say they’re doing all they can. Students? Well, they just foot the bill.

“The truth is there is no easy explanation,” said Michelle Froese, public relations manager for University Bookstore. “Books are expensive.”

The retail price of a textbook represents printing and shipping costs, authors’ royalties and the marketing by publishers, who pay campus representatives to pitch their wares to professors.

In 12 years, according to the Public Interest Research Group, textbook publishers have increased their prices by 62 percent. That increase has not only hurt students, but the bookstores, whose retail prices have only risen 14 percent during the same period.

Froese said University Bookstore makes less than a nickel on every dollar spent on textbooks. “If we wanted to make as much profit as possible, we wouldn’t sell books,” she said. “We’d just sell sweatshirts.”

Bruce Hildebrand, of the Association of American Publishers, represents the three biggest textbook suppliers at MU — Thompson Learning, McGraw-Hill and Pearson Education. He said there is a reasonable explanation for the high price of books: They’re worth more.

“Everybody’s talking price,” he said. “No one’s talking value.”

Hildebrand said “course bundles” — shrink-wrapped book packets that can include CD-ROMs, Web site passwords, homework assignments and customized reading packets — make it easier for students to learn. They are also more expensive than a single textbook. According to the Public Interest Research Group, half of all textbooks sold in the U.S. come bundled with other materials.

While bundling has raised prices for students, it has helped to undermine one source of irritation for publishers — the used-book market. Bundled books can’t be sold if any pieces are missing, the passwords are out-of-date or any part of the packet changes. Since passwords are changed every semester and workbooks are dismantled when homework is turned in, many course bundles are obsolete after a single semester, making them worthless on the used-book market.

Karen Jefferies, associate director of the MU Bookstore, said the number of bundles that can only be sold new has tripled in the last few years. In 2004, Jefferies said, 26 bundles sold through the bookstore were customized in such a way that they couldn’t be resold the following year. By 2006, there were 78 of those bundles, with a market of more than 21,700 students, Jefferies said.

That bothers Bob Pugh, Chief Executive Officer of MBS Textbook Exchange Inc., which processes more than 12 million used and new textbooks annually for more than 4,000 academic institutions nationwide. Pugh’s job is to inject competition into the textbook market whenever possible by selling used copies of books to campus bookstores — something that bundles make impossible.

“There are two losers in that deal,” Pugh said. “Us and the students.”

Mark Kuhnert teaches Introduction to Psychology, the single largest class at MU. With about 500 students in each section, the course represents tens of thousands of dollars worth of potential sales.

“Publishers are just clamoring to get my business,” Kuhnert said.

Kuhnert’s office bookshelf is lined with dozens of complimentary textbooks given to him by publishers. He has more at home, he said, and in his office at Columbia College, where he teaches a night course.

Kuhnert said he has come to know some of the people who represent publishers on campus. In fact, he decided to use a course bundle this semester after a lunch meeting with one representative — a former classmate from MU. The course bundle includes a password to an Internet site called MyPsychLab, complete with videos, practice tests, study guides, outlines and even games.

Kuhnert gave one test so far this semester, and the additional material doesn’t seem to have improved performance. Scores were about the same as in past semesters, Kuhnert said. But he said he hopes students who did poorly on the first test make use of the extra materials to learn more than they could from the textbook alone.

“If there’s no difference, then I would drop the MyPsychLab,” he said.

Other professors are taking more extreme measures against high prices. Matt Foulkes, who teaches Urban Geography, doesn’t use books at all. He believes he can make the class more interesting using his own materials, which include a combination of printouts and materials provided on electronic reserve. This strategy allows him greater flexibility as an instructor. Keeping students’ costs down is a nice perk too, he said.

Foulkes said publisher representatives have taken notice. He receives regular e-mails from representatives, he said, but so far he hasn’t had any representatives visit him in his office.

Some students, like engineering student Kyle Tabor, are going online. One of his required books, “Unsaturated Soil Mechanics,” was being sold at University Bookstore for $120 and he found it online for $90, saving $140 by shopping around.

“All my teachers say just get it off Amazon.com,” Tabor said.

One thing is certain: textbooks aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Froese said that last year, at least one professor offered course materials to his students in two ways — online for free or in a course packet for sale at the bookstore.

She said almost the entire class chose to buy the bookstore packet.