... is our passivity when our employers erect monopolies on campus to exploit students:
The rise of online textbook retailers such as Chegg, Amazon, and Half.com, has put official college and university bookstores on the defensive. Once the default source of course materials, campus bookstores run by Barnes & Noble and Follett are responding to the pressure by cracking down on competitors’ on-campus advertising, which bookstores contend violates their exclusivity contracts with colleges.
Chegg is a nine-year-old company that offers textbook rentals and sales, along with tutoring and career services. It has irked campus officials and bookstore managers with its marketing techniques, which include recruiting students as brand ambassadors, slipping free Red Bull and Starbucks products into book-delivery packages, and buying back books on the campus, often for more money than the bookstore offers.
The company has received dozens of cease-and-desist letters, according to its president, Dan Rosensweig, but it has no plans to scale back its efforts.
"There’s no legal basis for it, and we’ve never been sued," Mr. Rosensweig said. The aggressive tactics have helped bring rapid growth to the company, which couches its arguments in populist terms. "Everything we can be doing to help kids save money and time, we should," Chegg’s chief executive argued. "The school should not be working against the interest of the student financially."
via chronicle.com
It is rare to find an economist who thinks that competition isn't a good thing.
