Wolcowitz, who is also a senior lecturer on economics, discusses an article on textbook pricing and compensation in his course, Economics 1010a, "Microeconomic Theory." The economics of the issue are that in seeking to optimize profit, publishers seek to meet the desires of their consumers, who are the professors, not really the students.

Professor of Economics N. Gregory Mankiw, the author of the Ec 10 textbook, says the reason textbooks are more expensive than trade books such as hardcover novels is simple: higher costs of production.

"The up-front costs to a publisher of textbooks are huge compared to a publisher of novels," says Mankiw, who received a $1.4 million advance for the textbook that has won critical acclaim. He cites features such as colorful graphics, reprints of copyrighted material like cartoons, supplementary material, like instructor's manuals, and length as factors that account for the higher price.

Mankiw defends publishers' practices on economic grounds saying that if someone could do it better, they would.

"Anyone is free to enter the market and avoid these costs," he says. "One could probably publish more cheaply a black-and-white textbook without any" of the added features, but "few instructors would choose such a book, I suspect, because it is not really in the students' interest to sacrifice educational value to save a few dollars."

Mankiw adds that while the costs of textbooks may be significant, he says they are not unreasonable.

By Mankiw's reckoning, the average hour-long lecture at Harvard costs students $100. "So the cost of a typical text is similar to--actually, a bit less than--a typical hour lecture," he says. "Where do you get more educational value? From the standpoint of students trying to get the best education for the dollar, textbooks are a bargain."

Financial Aid

But despite Mankiw's claim, there is an important difference for many students.

While the cost-per-class figure is part of tuition and therefore covered under financial aid, textbook prices are lopped in with pocket expenses.

First-year Angela M. Hur '02 spent only about $300 on her textbooks this semester, but she says she feels the sting of high prices.

"It's pretty sad that I have to choose my classes not based on my interest but on the cost of the textbooks," Hur says. "[The high price] is limiting flexibility of choice and basically goes against Harvard's idea of education being open to all quarters."

Monica E. Eav '99 says she agrees.

"I definitely spend more on books every semester than I want to, probably $600 to $800," Eav says. "I don't think the University budgets it into financial aid. If you get $2,000 for living expenses and you're paying $1,200 just for books, that's not realistic."

John C. Santry, staff assistant at the Office of Financial Aid, says he was surprised that students were picking classes around their expense.