Have You Seen College Textbook Prices Lately?

NPR is once again shocked by high textbook prices. The mechanism behind high textbook prices is highly analogous to high healthcare costs. The person selecting the product, the person paying for the product, and the person using the product are usually 3 different people. In healthcare the doctor determines the treatment, the patient benefits from the services, and the insurance company pays for it (beyond the deductible). In textbooks the professor selects the book (presumably the newest edition with a CD-ROM, study guide and other bells and whistles), the student is the one actually using it, and the student's parents are usually the shelling out the cash for the books.

The professor has an incentive to assign "the best" textbook. She receives free trial copies and probably doesn't look at the price too much. The students are most likely passing the bill on to Mom and Dad so they are less likely to seek out cheaper alternatives. This is further amplified by the fact that colleges and universities usually have an "official" bookstore on campus that makes it very easy to pass the costs directly onto the tuition bill.

You can find textbooks for cheap if you spend some effort looking which makes me somewhat unsympathetic the people in the NPR story who are "feeling the crunch". However lowering textbook prices in general could be achieved by making it easier for students to find out which books they need without going to the campus bookstore, and making it harder for them to charge their expenses to their tuition bill.