Why are course packs so expensive?

MAX HALPARIN, THE MCGILL DAILY (MCGILL UNIVERSITY)

MONTREAL (CUP) — In 1991, Craig Park and his friend Hagen Menhert started producing course packs at McGill University.

After receiving permission from their professors and the dean of arts, then-political science undergrads Park and Menhert gathered course readings, cleared copyrights, and sold the first McGill course packs themselves.

Park is now CEO of Eastman Systems Inc. and Menhert is Eastman’s director and vice president. Their company is now contracted to providing the initial services on course pack production at McGill University.

But what started out as a small photocopying operation is now big business. But students are the ones who are paying the price.

After students in an urban social geography class at McGill University paid a hefty $72.36, before taxes, for this year’s collection of readings, professor Brenda Lee apologized for the high price during a class discussion.

“One finds out [the price] after the fact,” she said. “And then you turn it over and say, ‘Oh, say it isn’t so.’”

Second-year student Tyler Kreider was frustrated with the course pack’s price tag.

“It seems like they’re just trying to make money off students,” he said.

Course pack production, however, is not such a cut-and-dry issue. There are many players involved and less profit going around than one might expect.

McGill Copyright and Course Pack Services, as with many universities, covers all aspects of course pack production, including printing and distribution through the university’s bookstore. These services usually contract out the initial steps, such as contact with professors, generation of the master file and clearing the copyrights. This is what Eastman does for McGill. Then, from Aug. 1 to mid-September, two 30-foot long printers run 24-7 to keep up with demand.

“My operation makes no money, which is the way it should be,” said Course Pack Services co-ordinator James Warne.

There are two main costs that contribute to a course pack’s price. The first is the base price of 10 cents per page for paper; the second is a royalty charge for selections that exceed reproduction limits, such as using more than 10 per cent of any work or more than one chapter of a book.

The cost of paper is as volatile as any other commodity. In 2004, the base cost per page was around nine cents. It increased to 10 cents this year with rising paper and production costs.

Course packs can be useful, often intending to provide students with hard-to-find articles related to the course. Lee said that if she had known about the price increase, though, she would not have included the reference articles.

“I will never do this again; there’s not much satisfaction to students,” she said.The extra royalty costs for the urban social geography class added up to $8.32 — compared to just $3.12 last year — although no single selection accounted for more than $1.44 in extra charges.

Much of the money is shipped straight back to the author of the articles. COPIBEC, a not-for-profit collective of authors and publishers that collects and distributes royalties in Quebec, collects both the aforementioned royalty charge and the copyright fee, which is a flat fee of $20.50 per full-time student per year. The fee is scheduled to increase to $22.00 for next academic year.

When asked why the copyright fee continues to increase steadily — from $8 in 2001-2002 to $25.50 for 2011-12 — COPIBEC executive director Hélène Messier explained that the fee is tied to the “sheer volume” of pages reproduced.

Messier said that in the past four years, the number of pages reproduced in Quebec has increased by 33 per cent. The copyright fee, she said, has increased by the same percentage.

The additional copyright royalty adds an extra eight cents per page. This fee is increasing as well. In 2001 it was six cents per page, but will be nine cents in 2009-10. Messier noted that the reproduction limits exist to protect the authors’ original work.

“We don’t encourage reproducing above the limits,” said Messier. “The costs should be high enough to have a deterrent effect.”

In 2005-06, COPIBEC collected nearly $11 million and distributed $8.2 million of it back to rights holders. The following school year, COPIBEC collected $11.7 million and distributed $10.8 million back to rights holders.

Messier said that a 13 per cent administrative fee is deducted from costs and that the organization holds on to leftover funds intended for authors who are hard to track down. When those authors are located, they are given the money.

Messier maintained that with more employees and a larger database of authors’ works, COPIBEC is becoming more efficient at distributing royalties.

All that for a photocopy? For someone involved with a student-run enterprise that is now a part of a bigger business, Park had mixed feelings towards the copyright system and course pack production.

“Overall, this is still a pretty ridiculous price for a bunch of photocopies,” he said.