They wrote the book on ripoffs

Time is running out for me to resell my copy of Thomas' Calculus (alternate 9th edition). According to "Ripoff 101, 2nd Edition," a recent report from the State Public Interest Research Groups, publishers revise the most commonly used college textbooks about every three years. Published in 2002, my calculus book is nearing the end of its short life span.

Before long, the alternate 9th edition will be out of print and another edition will become the common introductory text. This changeover will not occur because the latest textbook contains a revolutionary new way to teach the subject or tackles some exciting new topics in introductory calculus. At most it will have a prettier cover, a few new color illustrations and different problem sets, presumably to make using an older edition more difficult. It will cost significantly more than previous new editions and a whole lot more than a used copy of a comparable text.

Apparently, students aren't the only ones frustrated by this rapid, expensive cycle. Several Penn faculty members, including College of Arts and Sciences Dean Dennis DeTurck and Mathematics Undergraduate Chairman Ron Donagi, signed petitions organized by the State PIRGs this April. In addition to airing a few other complaints, the petitions asked that Thomson Learning, a leading textbook publisher, stop needlessly revising its products in order to drive up prices for physics and math textbooks.

Although six members of the Mathematics Department signed the petition, the only signatory from the Physics Department was professor Paul Heiney, whom I spoke with earlier this week. Shelves filled with textbooks line the back wall of his office, and over 30 of the texts are for introductory physics, the kind that tend to be the most expensive. When asked if there was much difference between them, he shrugged and said, "Teaching-wise, I'd say they're all about the same."

In fact, the major difference between an introductory physics textbook from even the early 1970s and today is not the topic material, but rather that the more recent editions have color photographs, illustrations and fonts, whereas the older books have only black and white text. While the use of color in textbooks may be helpful with the learning process to a certain extent, a large amount of the coloring of the latest editions is quite obviously just colorization for the sake of colorization. As Heiney said himself, "These things make textbooks more expensive to produce, but publishers have no incentive to keep their costs down. This is because the people who select the textbook are not the same people who have to pay for it."

While there may be little individual professors and students can do to influence large publishing companies, it is possible for whole departments to make a difference. After Thomson Learning received the petitions, signed by over 700 math and physics professors from across the country, it publicly denied every assertion made by the letter and both editions of "Ripoff 101." Then it quietly made a deal with the mathematics department and bookstore at UCLA to reduce the price of the calculus books in question by about a fifth. Additionally, Penn has been proactive about of the cost of textbooks in the past. For example, the Physics Department asked a publisher to split a textbook into two volumes, allowing students who take only Physics 101 to not have to pay the full hardcover price.

When I asked Heiney why only seven Penn professors signed the State PIRG petitions, he said that many professors may have just overlooked the e-mail requesting that they sign. So here is the part where you, the Penn students, come in. It seems that the only way publishing companies will reduce their prices is if they are pressured by entire university departments and the only way entire university departments will pressure publishers is if they in turn receive pressure from their students.

Now, think of every class you've ever taken that required an overpriced, over-illustrated, hardback textbook that came bundled with a half-dozen items you never really used all that much, such as Thomas' Calculus (alternate 9th edition). Then write all those professors an e-mail explaining the strain unnecessarily revised new-edition textbooks put on the average student's budget. Ask that they consider working with publishers to provide more affordable textbook options for students, or better yet, stick with the editions of texts they are currently using. If nothing else, this is a great way to procrastinate from studying for finals and might give Penn's faculty something to think about during reading days.

Amara Rockar is a sophomore political science major from St. Louis. Out of Range appears on Fridays.

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