News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive?. Parent comment

Re:Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive? by bluedanieru on Thursday January 10, 2013 @08:16PM (#5040799)
The problem is that the market has been compromised such that fair price discovery isn't happening.

Interesting you bring up DeBeers. I suppose you assert that the global diamond market is healthy as well?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive? by maeon3 on Thursday January 10, 2013 @09:24PM (#5041013)
Textbooks and Diamonds are in the same boat. Free Market supply and demand has been subverted in favour of entities controlling the entire market and setting the prices where the consumers are powerless to punish waste and corruption by selecting an alternative book.

A solution would be to make sure that Colleges have to pay for half of the price of student books, and put it into Tuition. That way when students see the inflated tuition prices (due to lots of $300 books), they go with the other college that has book prices that are reasonable.

It's a nifty switcheroo to charge students tuition, then say "you are responsible for buying the books, and by the way you don't have a choice in the books."

[ Parent | on HN ]