Dear John: Pricey college ‘bundles’ plaguing parents
Dear John: Thanks for writing about the college textbook scam.
So far, I have put my eldest son and daughter through college (engineering degree and nursing degree). My second daughter will get her nursing degree in May, and my youngest daughter is in her first year of college at Duquesne.
As a result, I all know all about the college textbook scam, and it has gotten much worse in recent years with the advent of changeable computer access codes, which provide additional study materials online that are “bundled” with textbooks — at an additional charge.
You usually see the highest book prices in science, engineering and math courses, and also in MBA courses that can lead to a good job. English and history courses don’t seem to work like that in the book-pricing arena.
Bookstores and textbook publishers now want to sell bundles. That means when a first-year math student buys a textbook, he or she is also required to buy the study guide and a solutions manual for the math problems that are included in the textbook.
The study guide and solutions manual might be in a digital or electronic format.
The combined price for all of this is in the $300 range, and the hardcover textbook is brand new.
When the study guide and solutions manual are digital and the student pays $300 for the bundle, he only has access to the digital study guide/solutions manual for a limited number of months. At the beginning of the next year, the book publisher changes the codes for the study guide/solution manual.
So the textbook bundle has little resale value at the end of the school term. The barely used textbook itself might be sold on Amazon or somewhere else for $25.
Before the Internet era, new textbooks could be sold back to the bookstore for about 50 percent of their purchase prices. Now this is not the case for many students.
Other factors that have shaken things up are the consolidation of textbook publishers and the management of college bookstores by corporate chains.
I really wonder if this bundled textbook pricing scheme is legal. I think that if you wrote more about this, you might touch a nerve, as millions of students in the US (and their parents) are getting screwed by this.
Perhaps you could get Donald Trump to have a rally at St. John’s University and bring this subject up. That should rile up a few people.
As for my personal experience with the textbook bundle, at Duquesne (where the textbook bundle pricing goes on and Barnes and Noble runs the college bookstore), I spent about $1,200 on books for my daughter this year. The resale value on these book purchases is $100. All of the books were new editions. In another era, I could have gotten $600 from the resale of those books.
Sorry to write such a long letter, but something needs to be done about this, and there might be an opportunity here to change things. L.K.
Dear L.K.: Thanks for the additional information.
I’m still waiting for a publisher or school to defend textbook costs.
So far, not a word.
Dear John: Here are some interesting facts about the true cost of college.
In 1986, I graduated from Penn State University. For four years, the total cost was $22,000. Today, one year will run about $30,000. In 1998, I graduated from Brooklyn Law; it cost $60,000.
Today, it would cost about $150,000.
Since the early ’70s, the cost of higher education has increased by about 1,000 percent. As a kid, I remember going to a burger joint for a hamburger, fries and soda. It would cost me 72 cents.
If I applied the higher education inflation rate to fast food, that combination, which today goes for around $5, would cost $720. L.L.
Dear L.L. Wonderful memories!
I’ll accept your math and your point. I was at Syracuse in the early ’70s, and it cost about $4,000 a year.
One summer before college, I made about $300 a week loading trucks, thanks to overtime. That was a lot of dough. It was certainly more than my father was making.
Figure income levels into your argument and get back to me.
Thanks for the note.
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