When starting your college career, either at community level like Solano or any other college or university in the United States, you typically pay your tuition, which is considerable, your parking, and now it’s time to go to the bookstore on campus and buy your textbooks. What you are liable to experience next is major sticker shock.
According to state community college advocates and officials, students in California pay an average tuition of $138 for a single three credit class, but pay considerably more for the textbooks required for that same class, sometimes double or even triple of what the tuition is.
There are many examples at the Solano College bookstore. For example, the required textbook for MATH 051 (CRN 10643), “Trigonometry,” costs $257.50 for a new copy, and $193.25 for used copy, with no rental alternative. The textbook itself is a second edition that was published in 2011: a fourteen year old book.
Another example is the required math textbook, MATH 002 (CRN 10593, 10594, 10596), “College Algebra,” 3rd edition, 2014. The cost of that particular textbook is $247.25 for a new copy, $185.20 for used copy. There are rental copies available new for $185.44 or used for $103.85. The digital formats for the book range from $58.55 to $74.25, depending on the length of time of use, usually from six months to a year.
The two most expensive textbooks in the SCC bookstore were for PHYS006 (10766) and MATH002 (10593). The Physics book, “University Physics With Modern Physics,” 15th edition, 2020 is $378.75 new and $284.25 used, which is the same cost as renting it. There are digital formats available for this book at a reduced cost. The other is “Calculus: Early Transcendentals,” 8th edition from 2016, a book that four separate math classes use. The cost of a new copy is $531.75, with a used option costing $399.00. Rental and digital are available at a reduced cost.
Rental copies of physical textbooks do need to be returned back to the SCC bookstore shortly after the particular class is completed.
There are numerous other examples of costly textbooks, with averages ranging from two hundred to four hundred dollars, most of them mentioned do have rental and digital options. But those examples are causing problems for students. According to Imed Bouchrika, co-founder and chief data scientist for Research.com, textbook pricing is rising at roughly three times the rate of inflation.
Melanie Hanson of the Education Data Initiative states that 65% of all college students skipped buying textbooks because they were too expensive, 25% of all college students report they work extra hours to pay for books and other class materials, 14% of students skip meals and food in order to pay for their books, and 20% of students fail their courses due to high cost of textbooks and class materials. These are numbers that demonstrate that a problem does really exist. Even 80% of the professors at various institutions agree that textbooks cost too much, according to Hanson, but only 8% of those professors have initiated cost-saving programs for their students.
Which begs the question: Why are these textbooks so expensive in the first place?
The answer may lie in the publishers of textbooks themselves as they have a great deal of clout behind them in regards to pricing. The textbook publishing industry, according to the Education Data Initiative, is a juggernaut industry that is valued for over 3.18 billion dollars.
The textbooks that are published are expensive due to practices like compulsory purchasing, faculty preferences for traditional materials, and vanity publishing practices by universities.
Also, for the last decade, textbooks contain a great deal of digital aids that help both students and faculty alike by use of digital codes which allow access to the digital content, which contains expensive programming, graphics, and server spaces that add to the publishing costs of the textbook.
According to Atticus Frey, Solano Librarian and ZTC (Zero Textbook Cost) Coordinator, those services offered by the publishers, though expensive, can be very alluring to faculty wanting to offer the best possible curriculum for their students.
Frey also manages the Textbook Reserve program, a collection of required course textbooks that are available to all Solano students for two hour checkouts at the library. The system was set up as a safety net for students in need, or for those waiting for their student financing or for their ordered books to arrive.
Frey also advised that if students are truly worried by the high costs of their textbooks that they should look at courses listed in the class finder as ZTC or LTC, which are zero textbook cost or low textbook cost.
Finally, it looks like help may be on it’s way on the state front.
On December 18th, 2024, California Community Colleges Board of Governors approved new regulations that will require colleges to expand access to free, open source textbooks, and any instructional materials for students to be available to them upon the first day of class.
According to Board President Hildegarde B. Aquinaldo, “The regulation is a bold step forward in tackling a critical issue: making textbooks and other instructional materials affordable and accessible to all our students.”
Aguinaldo continued to say, “By prioritizing affordability, students can focus on meeting their higher educational goals without added financial stress.”
As of now, the state regulation has not been finalized. All districts will have 180 days to put said policies into place. As of this writing, the policies will most likely be implemented later on this year or the beginning of 2026.
