{"id":177123,"date":"2019-12-18T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/12\/18\/nice-that-someone-noticed\/"},"modified":"2019-12-18T20:01:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T01:01:00","slug":"nice-that-someone-noticed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/12\/18\/nice-that-someone-noticed\/","title":{"rendered":"Nice that Someone Noticed"},"content":{"rendered":"
The New York Times<\/i> has published an OP\/ED by Tim Wu mexcoriating academics for profiting off the backs of students through overpriced text books<\/a>. <\/div>\n

It’s a racket:  Publishers throw a few bucks at a professor, who requires the book for his class, and ka-ching:<\/p>\n

As the semester ends, instructors at universities and community colleges around the country will begin placing their orders for next year\u2019s textbooks. But not all professors will pay enough attention to something that students complain about: the outlandish prices of the books we assign. Having grown at many times the rate of inflation, the cost of a leading economics book can be over $250; a law school casebook plus supplement can cost $277. Adding to such prices is the dubious trend of requiring students to obtain digital access codes, averaging $100, to complete homework assignments.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n

The root problem is that it is just too easy for us, the professors, to spend other people\u2019s money. Just like doctors who prescribe expensive medicine, we don\u2019t feel the pain of buying a $211 book of uneven quality and no real use when the course is finished, or a digital access code that costs $100 and is designed at least in part to disable the used-book market. The fact that professors choose and students buy destroys whatever power a competitive market might have to keep prices lower. That, and a touch of greed \u2014 the author of one successful book has earned an estimated $42 million <\/a>in royalties \u2014 is why textbook prices have increased over 1,000 percent since the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Teaching is a profession with its own ethical duties; students are both our charges and a captive market. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything wrong with assigning an expensive book if it is really worth the money and the alternatives are inadequate. (It helps if there\u2019s a good used or rental market). But we at least owe our students the time to make sure we aren\u2019t just absent-mindedly ripping them off.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Across the economy, over the last few years, there\u2019s been a backlash against exploitative pricing, headlined by the condemnation of figures like Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Textbook authors and publishers may not be selling necessary medicines, but the practice of exploiting market power to its fullest raises similar ethical questions. The old-fashioned phrase is \u201cprice gouging,\u201d and we shouldn\u2019t be a part of it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve felt this way since I was a college student.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has published an OP\/ED by Tim Wu mexcoriating academics for profiting off the backs of students through overpriced text books.  It’s a racket:  Publishers throw a few bucks at a professor, who requires the book for his class, and ka-ching: As the semester ends, instructors at universities and community colleges around …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,397,385],"class_list":["post-177123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-education","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}