More on Colleges and Money

In an earlier post, On Money and the Lack of Same, I wrote about the wonderful collection of material collected at University College London on Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian philosopher, jurist, and all-round smart guy. I also wrote the reason I never pursued the issue was because of the savagely expensive tuition at UCL. Interesting sidenote, UCL also made an appearance in the posts about the Carbuncle Cup - I'm not out to get them and have no personal grievance. Sometimes coincidences are just that.

So, lacking the resources to go to London and study the Bentham material firsthand, I thought I would buy the books produced by UCL's team of Bentham scholars and follow along in a spectatorly kind of way. Then I checked out the price. You can see for yourself here. The list price is $525 for a book 512 pages long. Books printed by scholarly presses are almost always over-priced - the people who buy them are people who have to have them for professional reasons and, in this case, me if I had $525 (reduced to $420 if I act now). You might also have noted this if volume eleven! So scholars who want to keep up with all the latest in Bentham studies are out $6k. And that is just for the correspondence. There are many other volumes on different topics all at the same (seemingly insane) price. Keeping up with the Bartlett's will cost not less than $10k.

I don't get it. For me, books come in three price categories. 1) $5-20: this is for mass market novels and things I crush through in a day or two. 2) $50-150: Books I need for reference material or collectibles. 3) $200-300: Books I shouldn't buy but can't resist because it's 4 a.m. and I haven't slept in two days and I need (and deserve) a reward. I almost inevitably regret type 3 books (but keep them anyway, in a special box marked "Rare and Valuable"). The most I ever payed for a book was $350 for the complete works of Piranesi. I have lusted after books that cost more than $350, in some cases much much more. An ultra-rare first edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a complete set of signed firsts of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy (two-colour, first print), etc. But I can't bring myself to buy them. If I ever bite and scratch my way into the middle-class I will spend a disproportionate amount of my income of books but I still won't pay $500 for a book published less than a decade ago.

I suppose what really bothers me is the possibility (or probability) UCL students are forced to buy these books. There is only so long Universities can keep piling insult on insult on insult on injury. Enormous tuitions plus exorbitant rent to live in a building certified as the ugliest in Britian plus booklists that run into the thousands. I have, in the past, advocated against University reform on the grounds the institutions provide a stabilizing influence in societies where the pace of change is already too fast. But sometimes I think University reform is happening constantly and the only way to exercise any control over the process is to take overt control over it. I don't mean I should do this. I would if anyone was willing to let me but I can't imagine even a single person thinking this is a good idea. I mean society, the stake-holders, taking control to prevent the evolution (or more accurately unintelligent design) of our Universities into something we no longer recognize.