In Brief | Thomson Learning Campaign | Report | Bookswap | Faculty Tips | Take Action

NEW! Read the correspondence between faculty, students, and Thomson Learning.

UCLA Math Department negotiates $20 price break with Thomson Learning for Stewart calculus book. See the new UCLA contract.

A student taking a full course load often spends as much as $900 per year on required textbooks alone. With college costs at an all time high and the lagging pace of financial aid programs, education is getting hard for many students to afford. Expensive textbooks can add extra strain to students' already tight budgets.

CALPIRG is working to help make college more affordable for students. CALPIRG provides immediate ways students can reduce the cost of their college textbooks and also is working to find ways to make changes in textbook companies' practices that will help reduce textbook costs permanently.

Overpriced Or Unavailable
The best option a student has to reduce his or her textbook costs is to buy textbooks used rather than new. Unfortunately, inexpensive used books are hard to find, while overpriced new books are all too plentiful. In a survey taken by CALPIRG and OSPIRG in the fall of 2003, 59 percent of students said that they wanted to buy used books but that they were unavailable.

But at a large university, with so many students taking the same basic classes over and over again - and many students planning on selling their last term's books to pay for the next term's - how can this be the case?

Little Changes, Big Problems
A large part of the problem is that textbook companies constantly produce new editions of the same textbook - even when there is little new information to justify the new edition. Page numbers get altered, chapters are re-ordered, photos are updated, but the core content remains the same. These unnecessary new editions trigger a chain of events that eventually costs students a bundle:

1) Once a textbook company decides to replace an old edition with a new one, the used edition automatically becomes obsolete as additional copies will not be printed. To guarantee adequate copies of the textbook, faculty have no choice but to order the new edition.

2) This prompts the bookstores to stop buying back used copies of the last editions from students, leaving many students stuck with expensive books they hoped to sell back to pay for next term's texts.

3) The end result is that the used textbook edition disappears from the market almost overnight and students are forced to buy the more expensive, new edition. This process not only hurts students, but inconveniences faculty, who must create new syllabi to reflect page numbering and chapter changes.

CALPIRG's Campaign To Reduce College Textbook Costs

Advocate Permanent Changes In the Textbook Industry's Practices
CALPIRG has issued a new report that details how textbook publishers use gimmicks to inflate the cost of textbooks, and what should be done about it. In response, CALPIRG and the state PIRGs have launched a campaign to convince publisher Thomson Learning to make its pricing and business practices more fair. Read the report.

Help Students Find Used Textbooks
CALPIRG has launched a non-profit, student-run, online bookswap to help increase the supply of used books and provide students with a place to sell textbooks that the bookstores won't buy back. The site, campusbookswap.com is available online for selected UC campuses around the state. Students can go online and start buying and selling their books now.

Work With Faculty To Give Students More Textbook Options
CALPIRG will be contacting faculty members to develop ways in which faculty can help reduce textbook costs for students, such as producing syllabi for both old and new editions. Professors can be a part of the campaign by telling CALPIRG how they’ve been able to make textbook costs lower for students. Textbook purchasing tips for faculty.