State legislators made an effort to protect students’ checkbooks through a new law that went into effect this term, which aims to make textbooks more affordable. But whether students end up saving any money is in the hands of publishers and professors.
College students in Oregon spend an average of $900 per year on textbooks – nearly 20 percent of tuition and fees – and a 2005 U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation during the last two decades.
Beginning this term, textbook publishers must comply with three new rules geared toward helping students save money.
Legislators aimed their bill at lowering costs to students with the specific goal of breaking up textbook bundles, or textbooks shrink-wrapped together with supplemental materials such as workbooks and CD-ROMs.
These bundles can reach prices in excess of $200 each. In many cases, students don’t use the extra materials, but still must purchase the entire bundle to obtain the course-required textbook.
Under the new law, however, publishers are required to offer the bundle components separately to professors who are interested in purchasing a textbook. If a professor decides to do this, then bookstores would stock the materials individually on the shelf.
One student at the Duck Store shopping for a biology textbook bundled with a CD-ROM said that some supplemental materials do help. “But if you were to go to class, and just used the book, then it’s unfortunate if you had to pay for both parts,” freshman Megan Embree said.
College bookstores such as The Duck Store may bear the brunt of a student’s discontent when he or she is forced to shell out such large sums of money each term, but employees there are excited about the new law.
“We should now be able to buy each item separately, rather than only in the bundle,” Bruce Lundy, the book division team leader, said in an e-mail. “In the past, publishers have sometimes told us that a CD-ROM or Web access card, for example, is not available outside the bundle; now we should be able to use this legislation, signed by Gov. Kulongoski on June 26, 2007, as leverage in our dealings with the publishers. This will allow us to offer more choices to the student, such as a used book with the Web access code.”Even if books are bundled together and a student wants to purchase only the textbook, The Duck Store might not have the book on hand and is not allowed to break open bundles on the shelf. An employee can try and find a used copy, but if that is not possible, then a new copy will have to be ordered from the publisher.
However, the new law only applies in Oregon, and publishers outside the state don’t have to comply. In that case, there is nothing further a bookstore can do but offer the bundled materials.
“If more bookstores jump on the bandwagon, or this becomes a federal law, then we can demand they sell it to us. Otherwise there is nothing we can do,” said Gina Murray, The Duck Store text buyer.
Along with bundle-busting, the new law will also force publishers to give professors the price of a textbook before they order it – information that was once considered privileged.Not any longer.
Now, publishers must disclose the cost of each textbook, which allows potential buyers to factor in the price, and judge what effect that price may have on students. In a report investigating the textbook industry, 77 percent of professors stated that sales representatives rarely or never volunteered the price of a textbook, according to the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group.
The second provision publishers must follow is to provide information on the estimated time the publisher will keep the product on the market. Those critical of the publishing market suggest that textbook publishers constantly put out new editions of a book in order to undercut the used textbook market.
The shelf-life of a textbook translates into the number of terms or semesters a bookstore can offer used texts at a fraction of the cost for students. This, too, may influence a professor who is making a decision on which text to use.
“Both of these things are really important because textbook publishing has gotten way out of hand,” said University journalism professor Lauren Kessler.
Kessler, along with fellow journalism professor Duncan McDonald, authored the journalism book “When Words Collide.” The first edition of the book was published in 1984 and sold for $15. That same book, now in its seventh edition, sells for $58.75 this term. The textbook used to only be available when accompanied by a workbook, but bookstore employees decided to sell both items separately in order to reduce the cost to students who may not need the workbook.
Kessler was optimistic about the new law and said, “I’m very glad that a professor who doesn’t understand this process will have the information now that the publishing companies” have to release prices and publishing cycles.
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