Poor students can lag four years behind rich ones nationwide:

@nooneinparticular Said

I think the sad reality is that, with the proliferation of the internet and digital spaces, in order for libraries to continue to be viable they need to push a more face-to-face real-life community oriented image. As it stands, most people (from my perspective) have only two reasons to go to a library. It's quite and you can check out books for 'relatively' free.

@DiscordTiger Said

There are college text books going for over $1000. Many are in the 300-400 range already.

College students have less barging power than school district, but that could change.

@nooneinparticular Said

The price point is largely arbitrary because with consumers having no say in price and with school and faculty seemingly not caring about how much their textbooks cost then the question for a publisher with a monopoly simply boils down to "How much can I charge before I crash the education system and I can no longer off-load these books en-mass to an audience that has no say in price?"

There have to be some market forces somewhere because, without them textbooks could literally cost as much as cars and it wouldn't matter. Without protections, utility companies could literally charge millions to customers if they wanted to because they would be the only game in town. The same is true for publishers. Since I don't believe that there are restrictions in place for the price of textbooks, and if we assume a monopoly, then the only reason a publisher would not literally charge millions for a single book is because it could collapse entire demographics if it did, thus resulting in the loss of all their future textbook sales.

@DiscordTiger Said

Well, yes market forces... supply and demand. Entire economic courses cover the concept.
Ironically, economics has some of the highest textbook prices.

@nooneinparticular Said

Yes, but if we're going to look at what exactly makes textbooks so obscenely expensive then we have to ask ourselves what those forces are. The explanations could range form high production costs, all the way to the people who are deciding what books to use are somehow in league with the publishers to sell books at incredibly high markup.

Knowing what is affecting price helps us understand what can be done to lower it.

@restoreone Said

These are all pdf but they do answer some of your questions.

https://www.studentpirgs.org/sp/our-textbooks-research

@nooneinparticular Said

Thanks. I only read the first report, but if certain selection processes that I suspected were there, like the legacy system, are true, then it gives us some ideas on how we could, if given the time and resources, perhaps get better textbooks for the money.

First, the most obvious, is a problem the world over when an industry has a (de-facto or not) monopoly. We could put some incentives in place in order to encourage smaller businesses and allow them to compete with big names in terms of things like price.

Secondly we could do away with the legacy system, as it has no guarantee of quality or fair price. The idea that brand or being famous equates to competence is staggeringly naive.

Thirdly, we could implement a national digital system for faculty that logs textbooks by subject and price and allows for faculty to look through it to decide whether or not they wish to use it. (This one assumes, of course, that the faculty actually cares about the price of the textbook to begin with.)

Fourth, open source resources, with special respect to those who do not have access to the web at home, could be up for consideration.

Sadly, of course, most of these are pipe dreams in the current political and economic climate. The first one is both politically and perhaps even economically unfeasible from a government perspective. It stinks of government meddling with business and could potentially cost quite a bit. The second one is born of simple habit and while you might be able to remove some of that mindset, it will never truly go away. The third is a pipe dream since this, again, costs money, and while it could definitely be a useful resource for teachers, without textbook competition, it has little potential on its own.

This brings us to the last option. Open source is an interesting idea. Clearly, the government has a vested interest in education and it could, in theory, create an online source that both teachers and students could use in order to plan their lesson plans in such a way that didn't break the student's wallet. Like say, an indexed resource that could be accessed that's divided by grade and subject. Of course, the problem with this idea is that it creates a repository in which the government has control over and allows them to influence the curriculum in schools, and some will naturally oppose giving the government that much control.

With all of that in mind, until America changes it's attitudes with regard to spending and how much control a government is afforded, then this will just keep escalating.

@DiscordTiger Said

Open source texts at the college level, already exists. The problem is infrastructure to get good internet access to everyone. As well as some concerns learning is impacted in the difference between reading print and reading on the screen.
And getting professors to use it. Many do care about student costs, but have cost (wage) constraints themselves. Especially adjunct, even either the high cost of higher ed, many actual teachers are paid poorly for the hours they must put in. It's the same in k-12. Teachers aren't well paid for the professionals they are. Unions are looked down upon, and yet they are held to crazy standards on things beyond their control. (Doing well on tests).

Quote:

Overall there has to be a change I. This country to value education. That is not happening.

I mean value the process for everyone not just say get a college degrees. K-12 needs high standards too. Not everyone is cut out for college, nor do they need to be.