The Way We Buy Textbooks Is All Wrong
Something needs to change in the way we buy textbooks. In public schools one committee decides in many states what textbooks a school system should buy for their students. In colleges the professor decides what textbooks students must buy for themselves. Both of these approaches pose challenges to students getting the best textbooks at the best price.
In college, at least in your junior and senior year, the professors that are teaching the course write many of the textbooks. This has some merits, but what incentive does that professor have to offer his books at the best price. This is a monopoly situation where there is one seller.
In public school you have the opposite situation, a monopsony, where in many states you have only one buyer. In twenty states there is one committee that decides which textbooks all state schools will use. Here the state may get a good price for books as long as there is no corruption involved. The challenge comes in that the textbooks can become the output of politics that meet all the politically-correct objectives of the committee and various interest groups. The objectives of a textbook can easily be changed from being truthful and objective to being an instrument of social engineering. See MarginalRevolution’s posting: Textbook Socialism for more information on the purchasing of textbooks by state public schools.
There must be some better alternatives for the purchase of textbooks for public schools and colleges. I like the way the military does it. In the military, a group of instructors write the textbooks. There may be only one writer, but there are many contributors as well as peer reviews. The writers of the textbooks do not have any direct financial incentives in writing the text books. Additionally, the textbooks are written for the express purpose of educating the student on a particular subject. There is no political agenda. Lastly, the particular military school that provides the training for their students incurs the cost of the textbook.
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