The Pissed Off Professor

The latest buzz concerning the mounting difficulties of being a college student revolves around the cost of textbooks. One article about this states that,

According to a survey conducted by the California Student Public Interest Research Group, college students in California and Oregon spent an average of $898 on new and used textbooks during the 2003-2004 school year, the equivalent of 20 percent of the typical cost of in-state tuition. In 1996, the average cost was $642.

‘Unlike the $6 novel you can buy in a bookstore at the mall, academic textbooks run in the high double digits and even triple digits,’ says Kelly Tanabe, author of 1001 Ways to Pay for College.

Okay, let’s begin with the comparison of a novel and a textbook:

A novel contains a few hundred pages designed to entertain; however, a college textbook contains a few hundred pages designed to inform, explain, exemplify, and educate.

The qualifications needed to write a novel are, uh, well, there aren’t any; whereas, the qualifications needed to write a textbook include a certain degree of expertise in one’s field.

A well-written novel is immortal; however, a well-written textbook contains cutting-edge information—it is short-lived.

Novels rarely contain diagrams, pictures, or integrated outside source material; whereas, these are necessities for most textbooks.

(Hey Kelly, you might want to go back to school and sign up for one of my critical thinking classes.) Need I go on?

Regarding the comment “college students in California and Oregon spent an average of $898 on new and used textbooks during the 2003-2004 school year,” quit whining. Let’s round that number up to $900 and do a little math. During a school year, there are usually two semesters, and during a semester, a full-time student takes between 4 and 5 classes. Using the low number, that $900 is spread between 8 classes: that’s $112.50 per class.

How in the world is spending $112 dollars on a course textbook unreasonable?

Let’s think this through a bit:

The cell phones being carried by most students are more expensive than their highest priced textbooks, and when one adds the cell-phone-service-plan that certainly includes the bells-and-whistles of text and picture messaging, ring tones, ring-back tones, and games, the cost of that student’s cell phone per-month is probably more than the textbook he or she will use for one class for the whole semester.

The iPods being carried by most students are no different: they cost more than many textbooks.

I watch each day as my students walk around campus with their purchased fast-food items. In fact, many of the students who are on campus all day purchase two or three meals in the cafeteria or via one of the nearby food establishments: very few of them pack their own meals. At $5 or more a pop per meal, a student who goes to school full-time is spending between $25 and $50 per week on pre-made, convenience food.

And by the way, part of the money spent on those textbooks is returned in the form of book buy-backs, but no one’s taking about that in the statistical data regarding expenses.

Let’s not kid ourselves, the price of textbooks isn’t the problem; the problem is society’s penchant for blaming others for the problems we create for ourselves.

Students are in school to EARN MORE MONEY, not to become better educated! If they cannot learn to prioritize and budget funds for textbooks to reach this goal, they are certainly not going to make it in the Real World where gas prices, food prices, and all other prices fluctuate on a whim. The Real World is going to demand they pay for what they need, and if students enter college unable to prioritize and budget, making that responsibility go away is doing nothing to make them better able to handle the Real World.

That same article goes on to say,

Textbooks have gotten so expensive that 43 percent of students surveyed by eBay in July said that they have not purchased required textbooks in an effort to save money. Nearly 50 percent of these students purchase their textbook[s] without assistance from their parents or student loans, and they identify biology textbooks as the most expensive type of textbook.

I wonder how many of those suffering students chose not to purchase a cell phone, or an iPod, or fast food “in an effort to save money”?

I guarantee you those same students would gladly fork out the money if spending it could buy them a grade. And that’s part of the problem: students don’t see the purchase and use of a textbook as part of the educational process. They want to sign up for classes, show up, sit in a room, and get an “A.” They are simply not up for the work that college takes, and that includes budgeting for the purchase of textbooks.

Those who are on the bandwagon with the students need to be careful what they wish for: if they continue doing things like lowering entrance requirements, tuition fees, and the cost of textbooks, they are going to reap the rewards. A society filled with even more poorly prepared people who are certain that anything that is hard isn’t worth doing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 11:30 am and is filed under Argument, Books, College, Education, English, Students, Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.