My textbooks this semester came to a total of $97. Hardly pleasant, of course, but not unreasonable. My professors generally try to keep textbook prices low, allowing old editions. Yet other students, both here at Blackburn and at other colleges, tell horror stories of individual textbooks that reach well past $200. It seems especially egregious when an older edition might be cheaper and serve just as well, but a newer editions are required. Some textbooks require access codes that deactivate after a length of time, meaning that a student is essentially renting a book for three months.
According to the U.S. General Accountability Office, the cost of textbooks rose 82 percent between 2002 and 2012. But students will always need textbooks no matter the price, making the market for textbooks insensitive; this means that demand doesn’t lower when prices rise. These textbook companies can price gouge as they wish. After all, they hold practical monopolies over the industry and know that students are forced to buy their products no matter the price.
But does that really justify piracy?
Education is already the realm of the wealthy, and rising textbook prices only make such inequality worse. As long as knowledge remains strictly the jurisdiction of those with hundreds of dollars to drop, the knowledge that prepares one for academia will continue to enforce classist structures. On a more personal level, students are told that they must have a college degree to be successful, and they must have these textbooks for that degree. With their entire future apparently hinging on this issue, students without income to spend are left with little choice.
When asked if it was more ethical to pirate an inexpensive textbook than a more expensive textbook, senior Religion and Economics and Accounting Major John Aden struggled to answer. “The less expensive book does less damage to the publisher to steal. . .but people are more likely to struggle with an expensive textbook and thus actually need to pirate it, you know? I guess it depends on the student and their situation.”
As long as prices are absurd and students struggling, textbook piracy will continue. In a perfect world, knowledge would be free to all or, at the very least, affordable to most. However, as this world is not perfect, we must settle for what we have: a generation of students learning to steal that knowledge out from under its keeper’s noses.