“Inclusive Access” allows textbook monopolists to permanently consolidate their gains

Universities are auto-billing students for high-priced, self-destructing textbooks they can’t loan or sell.

The student debt crisis isn’t merely attributable to spiraling tuition prices — there’s a whole menagerie of feral hogs scrumming to get their snouts in the student debt-trap trough.

Take textbook publishers.

This hyperconsolidated industry, dominated by a handful of merger-based megafirms, have increased the value of the textbook market to over $3.5b by the simple expedient of hiking prices by over 1,000% .

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pajze9/people-are-finally-fighting-back-against-the-college-textbook-industrys-scam

Faced with rampant price-gouging, students have turned to traditional methods of lowering the cost of textbook access — used markets, rental markets, etc.

Publishers sued over this — and lost.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/attorneys-in-copyright-case-on-resold-textbooks-inch-closer-to-2m-payday/

Textbook publishers tried to counter this by bribing profs (“paying consulting fees”) to assign a new edition of the…