Price of Middlebury $42,120* *Note price subject to change upon purchasing books

Author: David Murphy Hagland

Last week, as I joined my peers in the semiannual rush to the College bookstore, I was unusually flabbergasted at what I saw. For three courses I was being asked to purchase 35 books - at a total cost just shy of $600. Were it not for the dubious reprieve offered by my thesis, the price of my books alone would have come perilously close to the $875 figure that the College deems sufficient for a semester's total living costs.

The price of books is out of hand. It has been rising for years, and is continuing to do so unabated. According to the Government Accountability Office, over the past 20 years "college textbook prices have risen at double the rate of inflation." See the full report at www.gao.gov/new.items/d05806.pdf. And students themselves - particularly those without the luxury of simply charging their purchases to daddy's credit card - are bearing the brunt of these costs. While ways remain to reduce somewhat one's annual book costs, -such as - not that I would ever do this, photocopying the entire book for a quarter of the cover price - overall costs continue to rise. If Middlebury College wants to consider itself an institution open to those of all financial means, it must address this fact.

But what can the college do? After all, neither the administration nor the faculty has any control over book prices. Are we not all simply pawns to the whims of the giant publishing companies, helpless to prevent the spiraling cost of our education?

The answer is no. I submit that the administration and the faculty both have the capacity, nay, the responsibility, to ensure that book costs do not unfairly burden their more cash-strapped students. Steps must be taken, both in the short term and the long term, to ease this problem.

First of all, dearest professors, don't put more than 10 books on the purchase list - ever. Yours are not the only demands on your students. A student facing 40 books to read in 12 weeks will need to cut corners somewhere, and much of the reading simply won't get done.

Second, please take a moment to find cheaper options - try not to insist on any particular edition. Is the 12th edition of Microeconomics for Dummies really necessary? Have widgets really changed that much since the 11th edition came out in 2003? Remember that your decisions have double impact on us students, who must not only buy a brand new and expensive volume, but can no longer sell our old editions. Truly exceptional professors, and there are a few, go so far as to donate the royalties from their own books back to students who must buy them.

Mr. President and Messrs Trustees, you too must share in the rising burden the students under your care are facing. The first thing you can do is help our professors to see the students' plight. Issue guidelines to the faculty that enact some of the above suggestions, such as establishing a price cap on professors' book costs. An official reprimand, allowing of course for unusual circumstances and special needs, would be sent to professors whose bill rises over, say, $100 per course. Additionally, the price of books should be listed in the course description in the catalog, letting students know what to expect and choose courses with their actual cost in mind.

There should definitely be more than one copy of required texts in the library. For those most heavily taken courses that perennially use the same or very similar texts, having the library shell out the one-time cost of buying 100 books will result in overall savings. Each student in that course, instead of purchasing his or her own copy, would be able to draw from the library cache. The library could insure against loss by charging a deposit, which would then be fully refunded with the return, in good condition, of the book.

Finally, why not include the cost of books in the tuition price? That way they would be directly covered by financial aid, putting students of lesser means on an equal footing with their more wealthy peers. Moreover, it would give you, Mr. President, a direct incentive to pay more attention to the "ancillary" costs your students are facing, and seek to minimize them. Professor Ian Ayres, of Yale University, offers a good argument for including books in tuition - see the New York Times of Sept. 16 2005.

Mr. President, Messrs Trustees and esteemed Professors: you face a critical choice. You must decide whether you want a college that continues to discriminate against those unable to throw down $1,000 beyond tuition every year. For unless steps are taken to bring book costs down, a Middlebury education risks becoming unaffordable to many of our best and brightest.