As the fall semester ramps up, the nation’s college students are preparing to make a dreaded purchase: course textbooks, which can cost students hundreds of dollars per year.
For years, textbook prices have been rising many times faster than inflation, burdening students already struggling with loans and sky-high tuition costs. A single course textbook can cost $400; the average hardcover textbook is closer to $100. Used textbooks and e-books aren’t always much cheaper.
How did the college textbook market become so broken, forcing some students to skip meals and work overtime just to afford course materials? One culprit, advocates say, is Wall Street’s increasing control over a staple campus institution: the college bookstore.
There are more than 4,000 campus bookstores across the country, and over half of them are operated by just two firms: Barnes and Noble Education, a publicly traded company that was spun off in 2015 from the Barnes & Noble bookstore empire, and Follett Higher Education, a bookstore operator now backed by the personal private equity fund of Tony James, the billionaire that once led Blackstone.
The duopoly may be forcing students to pay more for their books, thanks to a scheme originating under the Obama administration that has entrapped thousands of students over the last decade, all while bookstore giants and textbook publishers profit. The industry has stymied all attempts at reform, including stricter rules on the matter proposed last year under the Biden administration.
Many college bookstores were once run independently by universities, working closely with faculty to curate their shelves for students’ courses. But over the last several decades — as the rise of e-books and Amazon threatened the…
Auteur: Katya Schwenk
