Open your textbooks...

College students are paying $700 to $800 a year for course material and as the cost rises, so does the resistance

If you've been out of college a few years, visit the bookstore at your dear old alma mater and you'll find not much changed. The same sweatshirts, pointed banners, and car decals are there. The 3-by-5 file cards are still 89 cents a pack, a 12-inch wooden ruler is 79 cents, and the classic Bic pen with the blue cap (so handy for cleaning fingernails in class) is only 99 cents for a pack of two.

But when you get to the textbook department, where throngs of students will be staring in shock in the next few weeks, hang on to your hat. The titles won't be familiar, and neither will the prices.

A few examples, noted on local college bookstore shelves:

"Intermediate Accounting," by Kieso, Weygandt, and Warfield -- $145 new, $108 used.

"Introduction to Linear Algebra," by Schay -- $94.75 new, $71.65 used.

"Basic Statistics," by Spatz -- $103 new, $77.75 used.

"Fundamentals of General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry, 5th edition," by McMurry and Castellion, -- $195 new, $145 used.

"Industrial Organizations," by Waldman and Jensen -- $123.50 new, $92.75 used.

"Biology," by Campbell and Reece -- $129.75 new, $97.50 used.

Ask almost any college student about textbook prices, and you'll get an earful.

"Textbook prices are ridiculous," said Kristina Smith, 20, a third-year student at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "When I came to college, I didn't expect books to be such a burden, and I didn't budget for it." University of Massachusetts at Amherst student Marcin Wolynski, who runs a campus book-swap program sponsored by the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, a consumer organization, estimates the average student spends $700 to $800 a year on textbooks. "The first books you get for psychology or calculus are massive books with a massive cost," he said.

The National Association of College Stores estimates that the wholesale prices of college textbooks are rising 6 to 7 percent a year and are up 32.8 percent since 1998.

Resistance and protest have been building. A recent report by the California consumer group CALPIRG, called "Ripoff 101: How the Current Practices of the Textbook Industry Drive Up the Cost of College Textbooks," led to hearings last month before a subcommittee of the US House Education Committee. Bills have been filed in California and in Congress, mostly directed at extending federal college grants, or tax credits, to cover textbook costs. Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office agreed to a request by Representative David Wu, an Oregon Democrat, that it investigate textbook prices.

Even the bookstores are grumbling about prices.

"College stores are extremely concerned," said Marc L. Fleischaker, legal counsel for the National Association of College Stores. "The situation is serious and getting worse. Fewer students are buying books, because of the expense, and they're not getting the education they deserve."

Price points "Ripoff 101" found that California students pay an average of $900 a year for books. It also complained that publishers pump up prices by "bundling" books with CD-ROMs and other ancillary materials professors seldom use, and by producing frequent new editions, which reduces the resale value of previous editions. Professors choose the books, said Merriah Fairchild, CALPIRG's higher education director, "but the students are the ones who foot the bill."

Textbook publishers insist their books are fairly priced, given the development costs and the added value of support materials.

"The books are much more comprehensive," said Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education of the American Association of Publishers. "Pedagogy has become the overwhelming driver. A textbook in 1993 might have a study guide for the professor. The 2003 book will still have one additional item for the professor but seven or eight for the student. If you're in a math class, you buy the book, but you might also get 24-hour-a-day tutoring online. The publishers are not producing this stuff just because they can but because there's a demand." Hildebrand says that most books and support materials are available a la carte and that it's usually faculty who decide what they want in a "bundle."

Even so, Melanie Butler, manager of the Suffolk University bookstore, says the practice complicates used-book resale. "It makes it harder for us to buy the book back," she said. "The sales rep will tell the professor, `You get this free study guide with the package.' Some of them come back to us with the study guide, some without."

As for new editions, publishers insist that they reflect advances in academic fields, or at least respond to new books by competitors. "Instructors have historically been unwilling to adopt textbooks that are three and four years old," John Isley, an executive with Pearson Higher Education and Professional Publishing, said in testimony before Congress.

But students, many faculty, and even the college bookstore association aren't buying these arguments.

"College textbooks are outrageously priced," said Ira Krull, professor of chemistry at Northeastern University. "The parents and students are getting [hurt]." Krull uses the $195 McMurry text but says faculty have no control over the price. "We look for the best book out there, not the cheapest," he said. "We can't say, `Let's use this book -- it's reasonably priced.' They're all expensive." Krull permits his students to use older editions, "as long as they're learning the same material" as students with a new book.

Krull scorns publishers' arguments about the need for new editions. "Some books are in their 11th edition," he said. "They'd do a new edition every year if they could. There's no scientific justification, other than to make a higher profit. The fundamentals of chemistry don't change every year."

The bookstore association objects to publishers' practice of selling the same books overseas at substantially lower prices and has been trying without success to get them to offer American students the same prices they offer Europeans. "I can see doing that in developing countries," said Fleischaker, "but there's no rationale for it in Western Europe."

Hildebrand acknowleges that prices in Europe are often lower, but, he said, "it's a market-driven thing. We're all fighting for market share." The main cost of producing a book is in the development and writing, he says. "The good news is that once a book is rolling on the press, the price goes down. If we knock out another 20,000 copies of a book that is popular overseas, that restrains the price of the book in the United States." Hildebrand also maintains that rampant piracy -- that is, photocopying or illicit reprinting -- of books in foreign countries acts to drive up the prices at home.

Sharing the burden Students are groping for ways to fight back. Like senior citizens reimporting American-made prescription drugs from Canada, they're ordering textbooks online from overseas sources, or from American online vendors, such as www.half.com.

Two Brandeis University students have started a free web-based service, www.bookson

campus.com, so that students can sell books directly to other students. Tim Suzman, 21, of Newton, and Mark Kantor, 20, of Pennsylvania, are trying to roll out the service on campuses nationwide. They don't collect money or ship books; they simply help students find one another. "If a book is $100 new," said Suzman, "the store might sell it used for $75. They say they will buy it back for up to 50 percent of what [the student] paid, but only if they are sure it's going to be used next term and they don't have enough in stock. Usually they pay 10 to 15 percent. The average book on our site is 50 percent of the list price. Sellers can sell for two or three times what they can get selling back to the store."

"My books are posted on booksoncampus.com," said Drexel student Smith, "and I'm hoping to find others I need for next term. I've been telling as many people as I can about this, and its seems to be spreading."

Some students are trying to avoid buying books: using library copies, if they can find them; borrowing other students' copies; or using illegally photocopied materials. That trend concerns many faculty.

"Are we giving students the best-quality education when students are sharing textbooks or looking over one another's shoulders at a book?" said Michael W. Brandl, who teaches finance at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and recently published a paper, "The Textbook Problem." "We may be going back to 18th-century America, with one textbook for every five students."

Brandl suspects textbook prices are not that far out of line in proportion to costs. If the prices were really a rip-off, he says, publishers would be making fantastic profits and their stocks would be soaring. While overall corporate profits may not be high, however, the college textbook divisions of several of the biggest companies -- Pearson, Thomson, and McGraw-Hill -- have reported healthy sales increases so far this year. In theory, price competition could break out among them, but since those who order the books -- the professors -- pay no attention to prices and don't pay them anyway, there would seem to be little incentive for publishers to offer bargains.

In his paper, Brandl wrote that faculty bear some of the blame for soaring book prices. "My esteemed colleagues and I put pressure on the publishers to provide us with `free services,' " he writes, "such as computerized test banks, fancy software packages, and even videos to show in our classes. Who pays for these freebies? The students do."

David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.