Value of a Textbook & Crying in My Beer

I was thinking about the cost of textbooks again and how it hurts our students. I use a program called Aplia for my online and hybrid classes. Aplia provides an e-text for $60, along with access to the workspace site. The students can buy a physical textbook with an access card but that increases the cost to $78 for Micro and $117 for the Macro class. I recommend that they use the e-text and print out the chapters they need. The EOPs students buy the physical textbook because their vouchers are valid only the bookstore.

Aplia lets me see lots of interesting things. I can see what percentage attempted the homework, what percentage failed a particular question. Also I can see what percentage opened up the reading assignment. The average access rate over all assigned readings in my online classes is 48%. In plain English I can see that less than half of the class has opened up the reading. They need the reading; the average grade for both classes is about 64%.

I have always suspected that students weren't reading assigned material, but now I can actually see that they are NOT!

I was talking about this with another economist (who has been teaching for over 20 years at another community college, and he said the following:
(the following is paraphrasing what he actually said)

"The reading statistics should not surprise you! Student complaints about textbook prices has more to do with the the fact that many students do not use them. Many students buy the book knowing probably they won't read them. They resent the high prices because they see a textbook purchase only as some kind of insurance! Most use it like a reference book...Few use it as prop... All of them complain about the price because they do not use it as much as we would like them to.. Come on Mike this is basic microeconomics! Price should reflect the value the buyer assigns a good. They complain when the two are out of whack!"

As I was about to cry into my beer he said "don't get depressed. There are students who are actually reading the text, and learning. Look for those students and you will enjoy teaching more.."