Question the SOURCE

Like many Harvard instructors, Susan B. Crawford ordered a sourcebook for the class she teaches because she thought it would be cheaper and more convenient than having students buy the books.

Now, after learning her students had been overcharged by $73.74 each, she finds herself among a growing number of students and professors questioning the rising cost of sourcebooks and seeking cheaper alternatives.

Crawford learned of the overcharging when she took the unusual step of contacting Harvard Printing and Publication Services (HPPS) to get a breakdown of the costs involved in producing the reader for her course, Sociology 96, "Community Action Research Project."

She had been surprised by the reader's budget-busting cost, $226.46, especially since she had specifically taken off the syllabus pricey articles from the previous year's reader in order to reduce costs.

So while professors are not generally provided with breakdowns of the costs of the items in their readers, she sought one out.

"It took several months of badgering them all the time to get the breakdown," Crawford says.

The breakdown revealed overcharging pay-dirt: students had been charged for 35 articles which were not in the sourcebook, including a whopping $13.98 per sourcebook for one chapter."

"They charged us for all these expensive articles that I had pulled," Crawford says. "And the articles aren't even in the reader."

HPPS Manager Bob Davis said the overcharging occurred because the HPPS employee responsible for ordering articles did not understand which articles were on reserve in the library and not intended to be included in the sourcebook.

"The person on our end didn't understand the notation," Davis said. "It's a mistake."

But Crawford says she had offered to clarify the notation when she first requested a sourcebook.

"I specifically wrote [the production manager] a separate list of things on reserve," Crawford says. "She said it wasn't necessary."

Students were charged not only for items which were on reserve, but also for numerous items which were included on previous years' syllabi but were not listed anywhere on this year's syllabus.

When she learned of the overcharging, Crawford asked HPPS to refund the money her students were owed. But Crawford says HPPS ignored her requests.

"I left [the production manager] a detailed message, but she wouldn't return my calls," Crawford says. "I didn't pursue it as persistently as I pursued the cost breakdown because I was so frustrated. I don't have time to keep calling them every day and every week."

After being contacted by The Crimson for this article, HPPS sent an e-mail message to Crawford and said her students would receive a refund for the extra money.

According to Davis, the delay was caused by time it took for HPPS to contact the financial office and determining which students had purchased the source book.

Davis says this incident was an isolated case of overcharging. Two randomly selected syllabi and price breakdowns examined by The Crimson revealed no discrepancy between the articles in the sourcebook and for which students were charged.

But since most professors do not examine a breakdown of their sourcebook's costs, the possibility of overcharging remains.

"I can't help but think there are lots of students affected by this that just don't know it," Crawford says. "If I hadn't pursued and pursued and pursued this, I just wouldn't have known."

Costly By Comparison

While Davis says overcharging is unusual, some professors say HPPS' prices exceed those of other sourcebook producers.

It is difficult to compare sourcebook prices because syllabi are rarely identical, but several cases of identical sourcebooks reveal large price discrepancies.

Sociology department chair Christopher D. Winship uses exactly the same course readings in classes at Harvard and at MIT, and found the HPPS reader vastly more expensive.

This year, he is sending his students trekking to MIT to purchase the reader, in order to save money.

Instructor Marshall L. Ganz, who teaches a course at the John F. Kennedy School of Government with a syllabus that is almost identical to that of Sociology 96, says the Kennedy School reader costs about half as much.

"There's a systemic issue here, which is that [HPPS is] not accountable," says Ganz, who is also a teaching fellow in Sociology and Social Studies "Students pay what they're told to pay and nobody complains."

One reason students and faculty don't complain is that there are few cheap alternatives available.

Although McKay Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics EricMazur says he was surprised that his students were charged $39.00 for the production costs of a physics sourcebook he noted that alternatives to HPPS are few.

"The cost charged by HPPS is substantially higher than I had expected," Mazur wrote in an e-mail message. "Had I known this, I might have gone to an outside provider, although I'm not sure how I would have resolved the logistics of distribution and payment."

HPPS operates out of the science center, runs the distribution center for sourcebooks and allows students to charge the costs to their term-bills.

Cutting Costs

Davis says HPPS is working to reduce costs.

In previous years HPPS had farmed out the production process to other companies, which Davis said raised the cost of the readers.

This semester, he brought the production in house.

In addition, Davis says HPPS is a nonprofit organization and does not mark up sourcebook prices to make a profit.

"We should be less expensive than a commercial vendor," he said.

According to Davis, HPPS sourcebooks are more expensive because HPPS prints more copies than professors estimate they will need, in order to insure that there will be enough copies for all students.

"We were hearing from students that they didn't like the fact that we were only printing a small number of sourcebooks," Davis says.

As a result the cost for unpurchased sourcebooks falls upon the students who do buy the books.

Other Options

While HPPS sells most of the noncore undergraduate sourcebooks, there are some other producers as well.

Sourcebooks for core classes are produced by the Core Office independently and are sold through HPPS' science center distribution site. All the other course packs sold through the science center are produced by HPPS.

For professors seeking other options without sending their students to the Kennedy School or MIT, one possibility is the Coop. The Coop farms its sourcebook production out to Booktech, an independent producer, and then marks up the books 20 percent beyond Booktech's rates, according to Coop Textbook Manager Patrick Campbell.

These added costs make Booktech prices no better than those of HPPS.

"The problem is that the books are not sold directly to the students," said the manager of a printing company who requested not to be named. "First the publishers charge money to print the material and then The Coop marks up the prices as well. The Coop is not selling books to the students out of the kindness of its heart."

Students, the manager says, end up footing the bill for this collection of middlemen.

"I can't believe the numbers that the students are forced to pay," the manager says. "Just by looking at the number of pages in the books, I can tell that the students are paying for more than just the publisher's royalties."

Students and faculty are beginning to seek out alternatives.

The Undergraduate Council formed a task force at last week's meeting to investigate sourcebook prices and possible cost-cutting measures.

But until alternatives are found, students will continue to pay what they are told because they need the reading materials.

"It's like the 'company store' where everyone works for one company which also owns the store," Ganz says. "They can charge whatever prices they want because they have a captive market."