The Rising Cost of College Textbooks
Growing up, I hated books. I think I was always worried that I might get tricked into learning if I got too close to one. It didn’t matter if it was a textbook or a cookbook—I kept my distance.
Although I’ve learned to appreciate books since my childhood, I’ve always felt disgusted by the exorbitant cost of university textbooks. As if higher education wasn’t expensive enough, publishers charge hundreds of dollars for textbooks that are required by professors and then updated the very next semester.
Did you know that since 1977 textbook prices have risen at more than 3x the rate of U.S. inflation, according to NBCNews. Assuming an average textbook price of $250, students will spend more than $10,000 over the course of four years on textbooks.
As a result, more and more students are opting out of purchasing textbooks altogether, preferring instead, to rent textbooks, share digital versions, or study in the bookstore just before finals. It might sound insane but then again so does +1000% inflation over 30 years.
Obviously, students need access to affordable educational materials necessary for their classes. And the creators of those materials should be fairly compensated for their work.
I think the long-term solution to this problem is a Netflix or Spotify for Textbooks model. Students could pay a reasonable subscription fee per semester or month and get access to all their required textbooks. This would allow students affordable access to the materials they need and would also compensate authors fairly for their work.
For now, building the ideal solution is cost prohibitive and far out of reach, so I’m working on the next best thing.
Introducing Discount Textbook Finder
Discount Textbook Finder is a free textbook price comparison chrome extension. I’ll be releasing more information in the coming weeks. The extension will be completely free to use and will hopefully help thousands of students find the best prices on textbooks every semester.
After doing some research on the problem of overpriced textbooks, I discovered several textbook price comparison tools that were either no longer working or had serious user experience issues. Let me know if you would be interested in testing our MVP.
