(US) College textbook prices up 186% since 1986

As any student knows, the costs of textbooks are an increasingly significant burden on the pocket. And while some professors do try their best to help alleviate the problem by being on selective on choice of class textbooks, sometimes there really isn't much of a choice they can make. On the supply side, publishers are able to control how often textbooks are revised (most of the time very minimally) to prevent a secondary market from forming; and distributors can control which books are available (due to profit-interests). From the demand side, it doesn't really help that most students are information aggregators rather than assimilators either.

But at the crux, the economic problem students face here is cost of books VS value of education. And that's a really hard one to argue against that.

Business Shrink brings an interesting article on this issue, highlighting the financial problem in the States and various alternatives :

Before you start to assume who is getting all of the profits in the business, let’s take a look at the numbers as released by the National Association of College Stores. They breakdown the price distribution in an easy to view layout.

College Textbook Profits
Publisher: 64.3 percent
Bookstore: 22.4 percent
Author: 11.6 percent
Shipping: 1.7 percent

The college textbook revolution is now ringing in with a new model and ideas with the power of the Internet, Web 2.0 companies and also environmental minds pulling together. There are offshoots of a variety of companies that are aiming to fix the rising textbook problems.

But my contention at the end of the day is still that given today's technological standards, educational information could be and should be available freely. Or publishers/distributors should become more creative in their handling of this issue of rising costs. On-demand publishing anyone?

Read the full article here: College textbook prices up 186% since 1986; enter revolution