College students saving on textbooks
Trading, renting among ways to deal with rising prices from publishers.
Students spent 20 percent less on books in the 2014-15 school year than in 2007-08 thanks to services that allow them to rent and trade books.
Prices for new college textbooks have risen steadily since the 1970s, but students have started to spend less on them.
College students spent an average of $563 on books in the 2014-15 school year, 20 percent less than in 2007-08, according to a study released last month by the National Association of College Stores.
“Our research indicates that students ... still prefer print over other formats,” NACS spokeswoman Laura Massie said, but they are finding ways to get course materials cheaper.
“Many are acquiring used copies, or rentals rather than purchasing new, and others are moving to digital versions,” Massie said.
Textbook prices have gone up about 6 percent every year since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Publishers have been able to raise prices that much partly because their classroom-bound customers had little choice but to pay whatever they charge.
But as costs have ballooned, more services have launched to help students save, which could threaten that pricing scheme.
“The economics of college textbooks is very different from anything else,” said Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. “Professors select the books and students have to pay for them, so the normal market mechanisms aren’t at play here. Publishing companies charge whatever they can get away with, which is unsustainable.”
In recent years, businesses have cropped up that help thrifty students trade and rent textbooks. Rental services such as Chegg and College Book Renter are popular among students who need a title for only one semester, Perry said.
Renting textbooks can save students as much as 70 percent, reports Follett Higher Education Group, which manages more than 1,200 campus bookstores. Other services, including OpenStax College, Boundless and Flat World Knowledge, offer free online textbooks or a printed version for less than $50. Amazon’s textbook store lets students rent, trade, sell or access digital textbooks at a hefty discount.
As resources for saving on books have grown in number, students have gotten smarter about how they shop. In a survey, the NACS found that 82 percent of students research their course materials through multiple outlets before purchasing them.
It has gotten more difficult to buy required materials secondhand, Perry said, because textbook makers have sped up their publishing cycles.
“Books that I use in my economics classes come out every two years now, when they used to come out every three to five years,” Perry said.
Some colleges are making low-cost options available to students. In the spring of 2011, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst began the Open Education Initiative, which gave faculty a monetary incentive to seek alternatives to high-cost textbooks and use open educational materials that are free on the Web or available at the library. The grants range from $1,000 to $2,500. Since the program launched, it has saved students more than $1 million.
Similar programs at UCLA and North Carolina State University have helped students save on books.
So despite a textbook publishing industry that produces pricier books more frequently, students and colleges are discovering ways to offset the cost of studying.
“The average spending on overall course materials is down and we’re very pleased about that,” Massie said.