Senate introduces bill to decrease textbook costs

Students and faculty who have adapted to the high textbook prices may find relief in the College Textbook Affordability Act

By: SARA SABSHON

Posted: 9/13/07

Students whose wallets have been lightened by the skyrocketing prices of textbooks could receive some relief if an upcoming bill is passed in the Senate.

The bill, entitled the College Textbook Affordability Act of 2007, would require publishers to inform educational institutions and individual professors of textbook prices, any recent revisions and whether the text is available in other formats, such as paperback or unbound.

The Act would also mandate that all ISBN numbers and prices for textbooks be displayed on each course listing and each University would be required to give all class information to major non-University book sellers.

So why has the cost of textbooks risen to such a high point that the government feels the need to step in?

"It's all driven by the publishers," said Paul Lynch, the book department manager at the Johns Hopkins bookstore.

Since publishers make no money on used books, they need to create incentives to keep buying books new.

According to both Lynch and publishers create new "bundles" or "packages" to encourage the purchase of new books. These bundles can include CDs, workbooks and special access codes for online assignments.

"They sell these packages and it just makes it confusing for everyone. Students no longer know what is essential," Lynch said. The Senate bill would require publishing companies would also need to make all components of a "bundle" separately available.

Additionally there is the problem of revisions, where a new edition of the same textbook is seemingly released every yea. Lynch explains that, unlike in the past, the technology exists to make as many reprints and new editions as the publisher's wish.

All this revising has some professors adapting. Peter Holland, the chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Hopkins, is one of them.

"For introductory courses, the basics just don't change that fast," he said. "When the new edition of a book I like is not drastically different from the previous edition, I tell students they can buy or borrow the old edition, and I provide an old syllabus that matches up fairly well topic-by-topic."

As students look for alternatives, online book vendors such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Online have been quite successful selling used books. As Lynch put it, "The used book market is the perfect business because it is all supply and demand."

Tammy Hovey, a public relations manager from Amazon said that selling used textbooks is just "the next logical move. We know there is a huge audience with the need for used books. Purchasing textbooks can be extremely expensive … and students have a tight budget and need to get their books as soon as possible. Our used textbook business is quite strong."

Shamma Hossain, a junior, said she was a little skeptical about buying her used books solely from online vendors.

"A lot of my friends buy their used books from the internet, but I have a fear of ending up with a textbook with missing pages and writing all over it," she said.

Lynch says that a college bookstore cannot even attempt to compete with the prices of online vendors of used books.

"You find prices that are nothing like the suggested prices we get from publishers and it's hard for us because when you see your textbook being sold for $25, why would you buy it from us? We try and compete on the levels of service and comprehensiveness. It comes down to convenience and a commitment to the University."

Students are trying to get the best possible deals by shopping around. Hossain said that although she usually buys from the bookstore, she spends "hours researching all the books and their prices."

Some students, like sophomore Amanda Muscato, no longer buy some of their books. She says that she is not always sure what she will need throughout the semester and sometimes just, "borrows the textbooks from a friend."

Chris Yook, a senior, chooses to buy from a combination of online sellers, friends and the University bookstore. "I usually buy my large textbooks used from Amazon where they are a lot cheaper than the bookstore but if it is a smaller text, like for my philosophy and political science classes, the prices aren't so different, I'll buy it from the bookstore," he said.

"I found that in the first few years at Hopkins, I bought all my books from the bookstore at the same time, at the beginning of the year. Now I only buy the books as we get to them in the semester. I save money by not buying them all at once," he added.

So once you have your books and the semester comes to an end, it's time to get aggravated by the buy-back system.

Typically in college bookstores across the country, books are bought back for half the original price and sell it for 25 percent above that.

However determining prices ultimately comes down to what textbooks are in demand and knowing beforehand what books professors will want to use in the upcoming semester.

If bookstores aren't certain of these two factors, they can only buy the book back according to the national demand rather than that of the University.

According to Lynch, professors unfortunately tend to take their time in getting around to choosing their books for the semester and especially telling the bookstore what they will need in stock. "It's something of a struggle here at Hopkins to get them to tell us sooner rather than later," Lynch said.

But the delay is not completely the fault of the professors, Lynch explains. "Publishing representatives try and sell professors on these packages with all these bells and whistles which they don't really end up using," he said.

Some professors and universities have moved exclusively to online textbooks, hoping to avoid these problems. This does reduce costs significantly, but at the end of the day, it seems that most students want the tangible experience of a hard copy of a textbook.

"Sometimes you just want to curl up and read your book and you can't do that if you have to sit at a computer," sophomore Leora Brody said.

Professor Holland experimented with these online resources with no luck. "Several years ago, I used an on-line version of a major text; students could buy a license to use it for much less than the book itself. However, most students who used it didn't like it, and wasted a lot of paper printing everything out."

Recent governmental interest in textbook affordability is part of an ongoing effort to make higher education in general more affordable as represented by the recently passed College Cost Reduction and Access Act. The act will make grant money more accessible to lower income students, cut student loan interest rates in half, cap monthly payments at 15 percent of discretionary income, and protect working students by increasing the amount of student income that is sheltered from financial aid.

Recently Congress requested a study regarding the best ways to reduce textbook costs. The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACSFA) just released the report on its year-long study in June, entitled "Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable".

In their findings, the ACSFA recommended a number of short-term solutions ranging from textbook rental programs, ensuring enough financial aid to include the cost of textbooks, and an increased use of no-cost content.

The study stresses the establishment of a national digital marketplace as a long-term solution, stating that "the centerpiece of such a marketplace must be an enabling infrastructure of technology and support services with which institutions, students, faculty, bookstores, publishers and other content providers can interact efficiently."

The bill was introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), and was cosponsored by Sen. Norman Coleman (R-Minn.).