We’re rightfully upset that textbook costs eat an ever larger share of the student budget, but what reason is there for the government to be involved (“Easing the textbook burden,” Jan. 19, p.6)? The blame lies squarely on the universities themselves. Professors have a choice when it comes to the textbook used in their classroom. Dover Publications publishes a fantastic series of ten dollar math books, nearly all of which are adequate for a full undergraduate class. A number of foreign countries publish textbooks for their nation’s language which are available for under $10, and of excellent quality; the government of China is one example. A number of professors write their own text and then publish reasonably-priced paperback versions. When we pay $150 for a text filled with sloppily-written, useless add-ons, we ought not blame the publisher, but rather blame the professor who chose that book.

For more basic classes (say, Calculus, Biology 101 or Introductory Economics), a far simpler solution is possible. A group of universities could pay the “fixed cost” of producing a basic text, then release that work into the public domain; once in the public domain, the book would be available for free online or for very low cost from any publisher who wished to print it. The original cost of producing the text could be recovered by the universities simply by charging a small fee to every student; because of something economists call “the deadweight loss of monopoly,” this fee would be much less than the cost of buying textbooks under the current system.

The textbook pricing problem can be solved by common sense from professors and basic leadership from major universities; there’s no need to scapegoat publishers and waste tax money on government hearings and misguided policies.

Kevin Bryan CAS ’06