Surging Textbook Prices Cause Move to Digital Options
- Amy Russo
- Mar 7, 2016
- 3 min read
Fed up with surging textbook prices, students are looking to digital books and other alternatives to cut costs, and it may eventually be the textbook companies who suffer. While used books, eBooks and rentals are money-saving options, students have begun opting for digital downloads and PDF files of books online, a solution which is illegal causing some to ask when the price of an education becomes too much.
Zaba Hoque, a Political Science major at Hunter College, claimed she has been spending about $500 each semester on books and access codes for companion websites while she was taking science and math courses. Now, she has started finding eBooks or looking for downloads of the material. Hoque remarked, “Most of the time I try to find them for free. If not, then it’s significantly cheaper than buying books.” Kevin Lappya, a third-year Hunter student, looks to friends who can loan him books if they’ve taken one of his classes. “If I’m unable to get anybody to give me a textbook, I would just buy it online or just see if I could find the PDF somehow,” Lappya noted. Marine Kotlyar, a Biology student, took a science class requiring a $150 textbook but instead she found it online and only paid $30 for access to a Web-based companion course. “I feel like they are expensive,” she remarked. “There are ways around it.”
Not all professors have required costly materials for classes, allowing some students to save. Andrew Demirjian, professor in Hunter’s Film and Media Department, is conducting his media production course this semester without any required textbooks. Classes consist of lectures accompanied by videos, images and digital presentations, and Lynda.com, an educational website offering video courses on business and software development, functions as a free companion website to Demirjian’s class. Class materials and resources come at no cost to students, unless they choose to purchase an optional subscription to Lynda.com for further access to its offerings. Demerjian still believes in the ability to conduct a class without pricey books. “I have taught some classes where we just use online resources like articles, documentaries and books in the public domain. It can be done, although it takes much more time to prepare,” he stated. “The textbook prices are gouging. It is not specific to Hunter College though, it is a national epidemic across all colleges.”
Despite skyrocketing costs of printed materials, students have not made the shift completely toward eBooks. Instead, they seem to prefer free alternatives. Ian Griffin, textbook manager at Shakespeare & Company, a bookseller that caters to the Hunter College community, stated, “What we DO encounter quite a lot of is students asking how much a book costs, and when we tell them, they say "I'll just try to find a PDF online." This is of course illegal, not to mention hurtful to the author and publisher of the book (and bookstores!), and we don't condone it in any way. But it seems to be happening quite a lot.”
While eBooks have become a profitable industry that has helped bring textbook companies into a digital age, some students are opting for downloaded material from the Web and have found ways to bypass the costs of textbooks, leaving no profit for publishers and writers. While the practice is illegal, its rising popularity can be attributed to trends in textbooks pricing.
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