The cost of college textbooks is high on the radar screen of the Elite Mainstream Media lately, probably because Elite Mainstream Journalists have a lot of college-age kids.
From Sunday’s New York Times:
$200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math.
INFURIATING Scott G. McNealy has never been easier. Just bring up math textbooks.
Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of SunMicrosystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same.
“Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says.
Early this year, Oracle, the database software maker, acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, leaving Mr. McNealy without a job. He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course material that he spearheaded six years ago.
Then there was the Boston Globe piece about Boston University’s new program to rent textbooks:
As college text prices soar, students get a rental option
(Full disclosure: I’m an assistant professor of mass communication at BU.)
And to top it all off, here’s a recent report on NPR.org:
The Nation: How To Make Textbooks More Affordable
Full disclosure: None of the textbooks for my BU courses cost more than $20.
Campaign Outsider 
What’s your syllabus?
Which course? I teach Contemporary Mass Media, Advertising & Society, and Persuasion & Public Opinion
Any of them would be fine, but how about Persuasion and Public Policy? I’m a sucker for reading lists–I still have my Columbia Contempory Civilization syllabus from 40 years ago. Sometimes I even do some of the reading.
Reading list:
REQUIRED COURSE READINGS
The Interplay of Influence (6th Edition), by Kathleen Hall Jamieson & Karlyn Campbell
The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, by Larry Tye
Thank You for Smoking, by Christopher Buckley
Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman
“The Prevalence of Humbug,” by Max Black
“Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” New York Times, 4/20/08
“The NYT’s Selective, Misleading Pentagon Story,” Huffington Post, 5/9/08
“The State of the News Media 2009,” Project for Excellence in Journalism
“Buying the War,” Bill Moyers Journal, 4/25/07
“Iran Invites Scholars to Assess Holocaust,” New York Times, 12/6/06
“Times Bends Backwards For Holocaust Deniers,” New York Observer, 12/17/06
THANK YOU for bringing this up. I think this is one the most underrated and under-reported items why going to any college is expensive (and unjust for a lack of a better term). I understand money is important to keep an educational institution running but there is no balance when it comes to purchasing books for college, graduate, or even law school classes. A friend of mine spent over $1,000 on books (for a semester!!!!) for his Masters of Social Work program at Springfield College. That’s beyond me.
Yeah – it’s staggering what students/parents have to shell out these days. That’s why there’s so much value-for-the-dollar talk on campuses.
What’s not clear is how much does it cost to rent textbooks at BU. I’m assuming it will be cheaper, but that’s one of the things I want to know the most. Did I miss something?
Not sure, but it makes sense that it would be less than the cost of a used book.