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Chart shows skyrocketing costs of college textbooks.

BOOK FOLLIES:Tales Of a Bumpkin Thrashing in the Moat Before Castle Academe

And, Secret Ways to Foil College Textbook Publishers Gouging Students

October 29, 2014       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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In my first, and only, law class at the Georgetown University Law Center, an amazing incident occurred.

No, I didn't meet a stunningly attractive girl and drop out of school to run away with her.

I met a much more impressive and interesting figure: Professor Jaeger, prototype of the academic bandit profiting from his position at expense of students.

Here's the scene: More than 100 eager students on the tiered seats like those in "The Paper Chase" anxiously awaiting the start of the first class in Contract Law at Georgetown.

The year, 1962, during the Kennedy Administration. Washington, DC is still abuzz with tales of rumors JFK had stolen the election of 1960 from Richard Nixon by voter fraud in Chicago.

And, lurid tales of the three Kennedy brothers' high jinx at U-VA, the University of Virginia. Women, booze, political treachery -- that sort of thing that never gets old.

I am 25-years-old, a Michigan State University Journalism graduate working as a press aide for a Republican Congressman from Lansing, Charles Chamberlain and trying to get a law degree on the side.

The door to the walnut paneled classroom suddenly swings open, students gasp, and a tall man dressed in a lightning blue suit strides purposefully in.

More and deeper gasps as the man puts down a book on the long bench in front of the classroom, leaps atop it and holds the red book aloft.

"This is Jaeger's Revision of Williston on Contracts, the most authoritative book on Contract Law ever written," he exclaims. "I am Jaeger!" he shouts, pointing to himself as if we hadn't already figured that out.

I don't recall what the book sold for, maybe an outrageous $15 in those days, but we all had to buy it because Jaeger had written --er, revised it.

That was my introduction to the world of academic publishing. Self promotion, blatant marketing, virtual extortion of students for high priced books. You can write the script. It's not a new story, but it does get worse through the half century since then.

I unwittingly sort of semi-joined that world when a book about the political abolitionist origins of the Civil War I had written three years ago somehow was accepted by a university press and published.

To myself I perhaps should have shouted triumphantly: "I am Jaeger!"

But of course I wasn't -- far from it.

I should have known the academic world would never be at my feet, or even buy my book or invite me to speak at seminars. That was made clear to me when, at a conference in Cambridge, Mass., one of the nation's gurus on American History, a longtime Harvard icon, with two Pulitzer Prizes, scoffed at my pitiful attempt to ingratiate myself by noting one of my professors at MSU had been from Harvard.

"I don't believe anyone from Harvard ever taught at Michigan State," he scoffed, turning on his heel to avoid further truck with a Midwestern insect.

Chasing him down the hall, I tried futilely to tell him how Professor Cantor, a young former Harvard man, had fired my interest in history. His lectures were so stirring that students passing his classroom in Berkey Hall filed in along the walls to hear his passionate declamations on the founders of the nation and the icons of history like Henry Steele Commager.

He would burst into tears telling of their sacrifices on Lexington Green and their fierce debates in Philadelphia; students would cry, too, shaken by the facts of how freedom emerged from a throng of New England farmers.

The stone icon would hear none of it. Michigan State, imagine the fool!

My only revenge came that night when my reservation at an inn near the Harvard campus had been misplaced. The embarrassed clerk asked: "We can find no reservation for you, would you mind if I put you up at the Harvard Faculty Club tonight?"

Encountering the Harvard sage on the way into the club dining room, with the shock of seeing me -- a Michigan State clod -- draped across his ashen face, was one of life's greatest thrills.

Business Insider reported recently the nominal price of textbooks has risen more than fifteen fold since 1970, three times the rate of inflation (see chart).

College and university students spend an average of $1,100 per year on textbooks and related materials, according to an article in The Economist.

A copy of Greg Mankiw's "Principles of Economics," for instance, sells for $292.17, the on-line expose reveals.

One way non-profit publishers have combated the growing evil is by forming Project Muse. Since 1995 thousands of scholarly books and journals have been offered on-line through this service. Some 120 non-profit publishers are members of Project Muse.

UPCC Book Collections on Project MUSE, launched in January 2012, offer top quality book-length scholarship, fully integrated with MUSE's scholarly journal content.

My book, "Apostles of Equality: The Birneys, the Republicans and the Civil War," selling for $39.95 from Michigan State University Press, recently was issued chapter by chapter on Project Muse.

In other words, say you are a college student studying the Civil War: instead of buying the entire book as a course supplemental, you can get the three chapters dealing with the Civil War separately.

Scholars focusing mainly on abolition can choose from separate chapters with titles like "Birney's Epiphany," "Lincoln's Prophet," or "Michigan's Wonderful Revolution."

Yup, my book written in what the eminent mandarins of American History consider the literary wasteland of Michigan, has joined their precious scribblings. Should I chortle in the face of King Harvard? Certainly not! It wouldn't be seemly, nor even polite. I'll just invoke the ghost of Professor Jaeger, who introduced me to that exclusive company 52 years ago, to haunt their dreams.

The on-line world now includes MUSE Commons, discussed by one scholar: "The more we talk to one another about content the more we can work together to create a rich and thriving community of readers, writers, and publishers who support and promote one another."

There is another even cheaper source of textbooks and scholarly publications: overseas, according to The Economist:

"Foreign editions are easy to find on line and often cheaper--sometimes by over 90%. Publishers can be litigious about this, but in 2013 the Supreme Court ruled that Americans have the right to buy and resell copyrighted material obtained legally. Many university bookstores now let students rent books and return them. Publishers have begun to offer digital textbooks, which are cheaper but can't be resold. And if all else fails, there is always the library."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-college-textbooks-cost-so-much-2014-8#ixzz3HX2R903K ###

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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