I'm not teaching environmental econ next fall, and with a new hire in that field I doubt that I'll be teaching it again for some time. The good news is that I'll be teaching benefit cost analysis: an opportunity to bore students straight with a couple weeks of nonmarket valuation.
I chose my book, Boardman, et al., at a cost of $140 per book. What will the students pay, you ask? I have no idea and they don't either. You see, AppState is on a rental system. The student fee for the system is about $150 each semester and students just love it. Most faculty hate it since it limits choice. This past year the faculty tried to get rid of the semester ... no dice. Me? Yawn. Except ...
And the fighters were going nowhere anyway. Look for more UNC schools to adopt a rental system:
Though tuition at North Carolina's public universities keeps climbing, students will get some relief on the high price of textbooks.
On Friday, the UNC Board of Governors required campuses to reduce book costs, which typically add $800 to $1,200 to a UNC system student's annual bill.
By January, for large introductory courses, all campuses must either guarantee they will buy books back at the end of the year or offer book rentals.
Under the new rules, professors have a deadline for picking textbooks, which which would make cheaper, used books more available to students. And from now on, average textbook costs at each campus will be taken into consideration when the UNC board makes its decisions on tuition and fee increases.
Nationally, the cost of textbooks nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004, according to a study by the federal Government Accountability Office. Book prices go up 6 percent a year-- about twice the rate of inflation.
And look for more nonsense from the book publishers and they resist the resisters. For example, I received my instructor's copy of the new Boyes and Melvin (an international econ text) the other day. I'm not teaching international econ and don't plan to. On the front it says:
Not For Sale -- This work was provided free of charge to an instructor solely for evaluation and/or pedagogical purposes. Sale, resale, or further dissemination of this work will contribute to higher costs of textbooks for students and is prohibited.
On the back:
Help Us Keep the Cost of Textbooks Down -- Houghton Mifflin is working hard to keep textbook costs down. If you did not request this text or do not wish to keep it for further use, you can return it by contacting your local sales representative ... We appreciate your efforts to help us keep the cost of textbooks down.
It is well known that the costs of textbooks are so high because of inelastic demand. The consumers (students) are not so sensitive to price increases because their professors tell them what to buy. Being profit maximizers, publishers raise the price until the drop off in sales outdoes the price increase.
The production cost of these books is way below the price and not many textbook authors get rich off of expensive books. So, where do the high revenues go?
If Houghton Mifflin really wanted to keep the cost of textbooks down they would not discourage the formation of the secondary (i.e., used book) market and not insist on new editions every 2 or 3 years.
The Not For Sale label might work in other disciplines but I doubt if it will change behavior among economics professors who understand that an active secondary market is the best way to keep costs down. Plus, that's my beer money you're messing with.
A message to publishers: if you don't want me to sell a book to a book buyer, don't send me a book that I don't ask for. And I'm not going to contact my local sales rep about giving the book back.
