http://priceonomics.com/which-major-has-the-most-expensive-textbooks/
Not a big surprise that humanities (other than foreign languages) textbooks tend to be the cheapest. Lots of them are out-of-copyright classic works of literature and such that are available in low cost paperback editions.
I have humanities degrees and very, very, VERY few of my books have been “out-of-copyright classic works of literature.” That would be reserved for a few very specific humanities fields.
But, they are generally lower-cost paperback books of one type or another.
Not fair to just use the cost of textbooks in a given major. All students will need to take courses outside of their major- including the expensive ones. Although, I suppose those out of major textbooks are most likely to be sold after the course instead of saved. btw- my 3 semesters’ use calculus textbook cost $13 back in the early 1970’s (I had saved it and written the cost in it) while my math major son’s calculus book was listed at over $100- with a 1960’s original copyright date! This was for an Honors theoretical approach (as opposed to problem based in regular) sequence and math doesn’t outdate. I’ll bet the authors are not getting the royalties for his purchase. I wonder if any students look at the required book lists and change their elective choices based on costs.
I’m a very frugal person when it comes to textbooks, but in my time in college so far, I’ve spent around 3x more on books for my humanities courses than on my STEM classes.
I’m actually surprised that the norm is that humanities supposedly pay less in textbooks. Is this very common? I’ve yet to meet many people whom have spent more money on STEM class books in their first two years of college.
I don’t know whether the cost of materials goes down that much with humanities, because even if the textbooks themselves are cheaper, you have extras like art supplies or sheet music (not to mention musical instruments) or a ton of literary books that you have to pay for instead.
@NotYetEngineer most humanities majors don’t have “textbooks” like STEM and language programs.
Generally I would have between 5 and 15 books per class. Each of them could generally be found for $10 or less. It definitely adds up but still cheaper than many textbooks.
I think this article is skewed by a lot of things: for example, some classes don’t actually need the textbook. CS, for example, may have pricey textbooks, but I have yet to spend over $50 total on all my CS textbooks in a year.
Still, very interesting article, good idea.
Very interesting article. Both of the textbooks for two economics courses I took were both $50 in brand new condition, On the other hand, I recall taking an English course about women in literature and the anthology book we had to buy was huge and cost me $180! On the other hand, another English course just had us buy three small books that totaled to $35. I do agree about language being insanely expensive. I bought a loose leaf version of the text and it was still $90 while the actual textbook was in the neighborhood of $250 
Can’t imagine much of this article applies to most schools. Study was done with only one school’s data. Also, I wonder if the ‘textbooks’ include things like online access codes for STEM classes. For this upcoming semester, I’m not spending any money on actual books, but I’ll be blowing about $150 for access codes to do my math and physics homework. Could be part of the reason why costs are so high for STEM subjects.
Not only was it done with just one school, but it also looked at new books from the bookstore.
I don’t even think my U technically has a bookstore anymore because everyone buys their books online.
The language part that’s expensive is those stupid access codes. I don’t think I had textbooks without those until like my 400-level Spanish courses.