Textbooks Cost

Introduction

Getting a university degree in Canada is ridiculously expensive. Taking a university degree cost thousands of dollars. While there are student loans available by the time students graduate, they owe government thousands of dollars in debt. There are many reasons why university degrees are expensive. While the public universities get government funding, students are still forced to pay mandatory fee for services from sports to health care. 

The other big spending is on textbooks. Students spend hundreds of dollars on textbooks. Every year many textbook publishers issue a new edition with very little changes or no changes at all resulting in forcing students to not buy the secondhand books from other students from the previous year. In this blog I will share with you why Canadian students are forced to spend so much money on textbooks.

Why Are Textbooks So Expensive?

University textbooks are the second big financial stress for students after the tuition fee. The cost of university books has significantly gone up for the last few decades and mostly likely will continue to go up. An Average student can be spending as much as $1000 per semester. In some cases, a student can be spending anywhere between $150-$300 per textbook. Publishers work with universities. When they publish a so-called the new edition of a textbook, they ensure to put it on the mandatory reading list leaving the students no choice except to buy it. 

The university textbooks have guaranteed buyers which allow the publication houses to set prices that they would desire because students will be buying it even if they disagree with the price. Textbooks are also available only at the campus bookstore which eliminates the option to buy it from elsewhere. Additionally, textbooks are published by large companies who have very little or no competition at all resulting in publication houses to overpriced textbooks. There are only a few publication houses that publish university textbooks, a lack of competition is a big problem. Education should not be something that only the ones who have money can afford it but just like many other sectors the lack of competition has created a problem in education sector as well. One simple step of increasing competition alone can significantly make improvement in reducing the textbooks cost.