From: hougen@focus.csl.uiuc.edu (Darrell Roy Hougen)
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: High Prices of Math Books. I am pissed.
Date: 6 Jan 1993 18:26:32 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: focus.csl.uiuc.edu

gjm11@cus.cam.ac.uk (G.J. McCaughan) writes:

% In article <1idj1gINNhah@roundup.crhc.uiuc.edu> hougen@focus.csl.uiuc.edu (Darrell Roy Hougen) writes:
%%  I cannot see
%% sticking it to others to make my life easier.  Enough of special
%% interest politics.  

% So you think it is fair that people from poor families can't go to the
% best institutions without spending years making money first?

First of all, I should point out that most people that go to college
are from middle and upper income families so that the huge state and
federal subsidies of those educational institutions mainly benefit
middle and upper income students.

Second, educational loans and grants are already available to those
that need them.  Their adequacy might be debatable but ...

Third, I've seen lots of students sucking down lots of money in the
form of beer in local bars.  I don't know why other people should be
forced to subsidize that lifestyle or any other lifestyle for that
matter.

I agree that is a shame that educational costs are skyrocketting out
of sight, but we should try to determine the causes of this phenomenon
and reverse it rather than just throwing more money at the problem.  I
am not as familiar with the educational problem as I am with the
health care problem but it is clear that in the latter case,
government expenditures and interference in the market place have only
exacerbated the problem.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that
government interference has made the problem at least ten times worse.

If one starts subsidizing textbooks, what is to keep the textbook
providers from just raising their prices in order to make larger
profits?  Do you plan to start regulating the publishing industry?
Government regulated industries are notoriously inefficient and this
smacks of infringement on the right to free speech.  Why do we need to
fatten the publisher's bottom line with taxpayer dollars?  One of the
things that holds book prices down is the fact that some people can't
afford them.

Perhaps we need some competition in the educational market place.  If
more than one instructor was teaching basically the same class with
different textbooks, perhaps some students would decide to take the
cheaper class.  I don't know if this is workable or not but it is an
idea.

Another possibility is to bypass the publishers.  As another poster
was suggesting, we could create a free textbook foundation.  Another
possibility is to sell copyrights directly to consumers at a low cost.
So, for example, a student could purchase the right to print out a
PostScript version of a text for, say, $5, directly from the author.
To take this a step further, an instructor could obtain the right to
make X copies of a text for X * $5 directly from the author and could
then pass the $5 cost on the students in his/her class.

The above solution has the advantages of maintaining the profit motive
for the textbook writers while substantially reducing the cost to
students.  Also, the turn around time would be much shorter so that
the instructor and students could decide which book to use on the
first day of class.  The drawback is that books would no longer be
hardbound, though its not hard to imagine companies springing up that
would do the binding cheaply.  Right now, binding is not cheap, ie.,
$18 or some such figure.  But, as someone pointed out earlier, one of
the reasons soft cover books are not used more is that people want
hard bound books.  So, maybe the cost of the books from the publishers
is not that outrageous afterall.  

It would be interesting to see if any authors or instructors reading
this could successfully employ the above idea.  It would also be
interesting to see if the idea could be transplanted into elementary
and secondary schools where textbooks currently must be resused year
after year but are often abused.  This would make it possible for each
student to keep his/her book.  Chapters could even be handed out one
at a time in lower grades to mitigate problems with lost or damaged
books.  (I think I'll go into the book binding business :-)

% And it can be done without bankrupting the government; the UK has had
% such a system for ages, and it has worked all right.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that a much
smaller percentage of people go to college in European countries,
mainly because the European system is different from that in the
U.S.A.

Darrell R. Hougen