Then there are slight changes for "new editions" then the old ones are no longer adequate.

Scambo!!!

The cost of college books has always been outrageous. They're either written by the instructors or friends of the instructors.

Also, FYI, some students would get the reference numbers off of teh books and go online to places such as ebay.. that helped some out.

While I was a student, the books I needed cost over $100, and I used alot of books. The bookstore would buy them back for a fraction of the price. It was just not worth it, so I kept them (for reference).
The majority of the time, a new edition would come out the next year, which would then make the previous year's books obsolete for the next year's class.

One thing the state can do is eliminate some of the "extortion" that is being conducted by some of these professors. When I was in college, there were a few classes that required us to purchase a book, which was written and published by the professor teaching the course. The prices were usually around $60 - $70 for a paperback. Since the professors create their own syllabus, they can require these books and their is nothing the student can do without a book rental program.

Great comment metromilton. I have a child that goes to school in another state - academically, one of the best in the country. Currently, it costs less for that child to go there than it does for my other children in the UW system (except for travel). And the connections are better than any school in UW for the field that child is studying. That child is taught by professors, not TAs...we're getting a bang for our buck.

Actually, when I talk to parents of high schoolers right now, I highly recommend that they pursue looking out of state. It's amazing what kind of financial help they give if your child is a high achiever!

Note to Regents.....a recent survey found that 4 out of 5 UW systems students prefer LOWER TUITION over book costs.......Work on THAT!!!

My son is buying many books on half.com with great savings. He contacts professors first to see if they will accept an older version of a textbook too so he can save even more.

meinelkm20, I was a professor for 15 years. I agree completely with your observations, but the problem I faced was that older versions were not always available. The publishers would change the appearance of figures and little or no text, then charge more. In upper level chemistry, there was a narrow range of options. At that time, there was no option for rental around my school. I would tell students the ISBN as soon as I could, so they could buy on-line (which the bookstore on campus made clear it opposed). Some of my UWW MBA classes have required up to four books for an on-line course (the one now requires two), which doesn't help costs either.

I took 4 classes this semester at UW-Rock. The used books for all 4 classes averaged $56, not to bad.

It's been over 3 decades since I had to buy college textbooks, but they were expensive back then too. In addition to getting clipped by edition changes, there was the all too frequent required reading list of buddy books. An instructor (usually in one of the squishy fields such as English, Sociology or Philosophy) would pile up a list of required readings which happened to be obscure, small, and pricy texts written by their buddies. Of course, "Ode to a Radish" or "Mating Rituals of the Upper Ubangi Tribes" didn't sell too well so the bookstore wouldn't buy them back even though there was only going to be one edition - ever. I suspect some of those "Buddy books" were cranked out by vanity presses.
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It was bad enough when you first went to a large campus like UW-Madison, and didn't know enough to shop the University Bookstore for the required reading list and total up textbook costs before signing up for classes. At a small campus like U-Rock, God help you if the one instructor there in your major was a buddy-book professor: 4 semesters of junk books.

When I went to UWW as an undergrad I worked in the textbook rental, so I actually happen to know a lot about this topic...
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Yes, the rental system is amazing. It costs students roughly $65/semester to rent books. However, it is VERY costly to start up a textbook rental because books are so expensive. Publishers somehow convince professors that they NEED the newest edition with the CD, or the Study Guide, or whatever crap comes with it. So the professors go with that package and end up using only the book, even though they paid for the whole package.
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The other thing Professors need to realize is that although a new edition comes out every couple of years, it's mostly the same information. Maybe a chapter got moved in the sequence, but rarely is it much different. Mostly just updated dates in example problems.
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I hope other schools in the UW system can eventually move to a rental system, or at least have some of their books for rent instead of purchase. I know first hand that you get back a mere fraction of what you pay for a new book if you sell it back. Hopefully costs go down in the future, although that does not seem to be the trend.

Sure, reducing text book costs would be a good thing, but I have to admit that, being a student at UW Madison, my textbooks are the CHEAPEST thing here. How about reducing my tuition that keeps going up every few months or the housing bill for my dorm room that, if divided up monthly, costs as much as the average apartment? I think the UW system has bigger problems to worry about than the costs of books.

Alot of times I would buy my books online at Amazon.com or ebay usually Amazon and get them for a third of the cost the book stores would sell them and they would all be brand new.

Something seriously needs to be done. I only have 2 classes this semester and my books cost nearly $400. It is just insane!

If they wouldn't change text books so often, maybe people could sell their text books to others after they're done.

We had textbook rental at UWW. I loved it. It saves the students money and there is more reusing of textbooks, so it is "green". The only text books I had to buy were reference materials that I wanted to keep like translation dictionaries and books that have new info every year like tax accounting books.

I wish I had a book rental when I went to school. I remember taking first semester chemistry with one professor, then 2nd semester with a different professor who used a different book. I couldn't return the 1st book because they had just come out with a new edition, and after the 2nd semester the professor switched to a different book so the 2nd book, even though it was still current, was not returnable. So I wasted money on 2 chemistry books. Not to mention the 4-6 books I had to waste my money on for some stupid African Storyteller class (ethnic requirement).