Letter to the editor

We all know that students are being charged outrageous and
unfair prices for textbooks. The question becomes: What can we do
to stop this abuse?

I have a simple, practical approach. California public colleges
and universities should join together as a buying consortium and
negotiate with textbook publishers and distributors as a group. The
textbook publishers would either agree on a sales price with the
public universities’ consortium, or they wouldn’t be
able to sell their textbooks on California public university
campuses. This would let us rapidly deflate textbook prices to a
reasonable level.

The universities’ buying consortium could tell the
publishers, “So you want $135 for your basic calculus
textbook. Nice try. We’ll offer $25. Either you come down to
an agreeable level, or you’re not going to sell any textbooks
around here.” The buying consortium would be like collective
bargaining for textbook purchasers.

What most students currently do is go to the bookstore and pay
whatever price the publishers put on the cover of their books. This
is like going into a car dealership and paying whatever the dealer
says the price is. Imagine if a Ford dealer told a prospective
customer that the price for a Ford Focus was $60,000, with $20,000
for the radio telescope, $15,000 for the pair of bald eagles, and
$5,000 for the solid-gold steering wheel. Nobody would accept that
price. Most people negotiate with the dealer and get about the
invoice price for a vehicle they wish to purchase.

The university buying consortium would make textbook price a
negotiated item, not whatever the publisher puts on the cover.

Using this system to buy textbooks would be similar to the way
CalPERS buys health insurance for California state employees.
CalPERS negotiates the rates for all state employees as a group,
which gives the employees leverage in dealing with the insurers.
This has proven effective in keeping down health insurance
costs.

It’s time to take action to end textbook price abuse. And
we have to operate as a group to make it happen.

Richard A. Koris UCLA alumnus