A new federal law aimed at helping students access more affordable course materials went into effect in July. Photo Illustration by Megan Gartner.
A new federal law aimed at helping students access more affordable course materials went into effect in July.
The law, which is part of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, requires textbook publishers to provide detailed information about the prices of textbooks, the copyright dates of the three previous editions, the revisions of content in the new edition and how the textbook is available in other formats, like online.
“I paid about $700 for textbooks only for this semester,” said Ellie Rivera, junior Elementary Education major. “I am a little bit excited about this law. If the textbooks will be a little bit cheaper, I will be a little bit excited.”
Students usually pay several hundred dollars for their textbooks every year depending on their majors.
“I paid close to $500 for my textbooks. I think the textbooks are higher than what they need to be right now,” said Joel Wilburn, senior secondary education major. “My major is not as expensive as Nursing or Business.”
Professors also think the textbooks are getting expensive.
“Textbooks in general, I think (are) very expensive. Over the years, it has become more and more expensive,” said Alexis Downs, associate professor of Accounting and Information systems.
The effect of the new textbook law on decreasing the price of textbooks is limited.
“I think it will have some sort of effect. But, it won’t be perfect, it won’t drive down the price as much as students would like them to do,” Wilburn said.
Mike McRell, manager of the Memorial Union Bookstore, thinks that the new law is not going to lower the textbook prices immediately.
“Because the publishers have the price set at a certain point, and they are not going to drop the price just because the information is out there,” he said.“The law doesn’t tell them that they can charge only certain amount. The law just said they had to provide the information.”
However, the change in the law has affected the way the campus bookstore does business.
“We had to update our website and be ready for July, because we are the distributor of that information for the university,” McRell said.
Downs said this new law is helpful for faculty who are choosing textbooks to teach from.
“The publishers will provide more information about the different versions of the textbooks, so I will know more about the options,” Downs said.
The quality of the textbook’s content is always a professor’s first concern, she said. At the same time, a lot of professors are aware of the prices of textbooks.
“The problem for tax textbooks is that the government changes the tax law every year, so I will need to change the tax textbook every year,” Downs said. “Price is really important. The textbook I am using right now costs about half as much as the book that I used two years ago.”
The new law is intended to encourage students, faculty, administrators, bookstores and publishers to work together to decrease the price of the college textbook by enhancing transparency.
“The publisher cares about the price most.If it’s pricier, they will get more money,” Rivera said.
McRell also believes that the publishers control the textbook price.
“That’s publisher’s business. They are out there to make money,” he said. “(But) I do think the textbooks are expensive.”
Students will have more options to get their textbooks, after getting the detailed information provided by publishers. They can buy new books, used books, digital books or rent books, either in the bookstores or online when planning their textbook budget.
“I don’t think there is any one way to control the textbook price,” McRell said. “I think students have to have their voice.”
Han Yan/The Bulletin
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the editors may want to go back through this story with the grammer check on there computer next time. because there are mistakes all over the place!! oh yeah and this story would have had better timing if it would have been published last week you know when people were still buying there books!
Those stupid publishers and their ridiculously monopolistic ways. Here is the truth. My books were going to total $1300 this semester, of course until I said #$%* that and purchased international editions.
I paid $360 instead.
What the publishers don’t want you to know is this. They copy the content of U.S. editions and release paperback versions into developing countries at about the equivalent of $10-$15 per piece. Why is this I might add.
Well, in developing regions, GDP per capita of course is much lower, and so is income levels, and so is the cost of production for these books on the foreign market. They even use these “cheap” books in already developed countries like Germany, Singapore, and Canada.
It seems so that students in Canada or any of the other previously mentioned countries don’t have this problem of added expense for overpriced and outrageously expensive books.
So… What is the problem? Why are books so expensive here and nowhere else?
Perhaps its the same reason diamonds are so expensive. One company controls 80% of the diamond reserves in the world. They name the going market price.
Perhaps it is safe to speculate that the college textbook industry is dominated by a few of these publishers. They are brought demand by mandatory requirements of using their published books by every university across the nation. If demand is created systematically like this, they get to name their own price, and the rest are left to burden its consequences, financially anyway.
There is a huge underground market on ebay and other sites for international edition books, because students simply cannot afford to pay for these textbooks from the local bookstores who also sell at insane markups. The publishers have been amending the government to cease the distribution of international editions to the U.S., but have failed. I hope these stupid textbook mongers get their wits straight to the demand of the students and stop this non-sense that has been going on for years.
Strangely enough, my new international edition books this year have the same content and page numbers in them, but the questions at the end of the chapter are the same but the sequence has changed. For example; I’m assigned page 20; questions 1,5,10 for US edition. The international edition may have question 1 on 12, 5 on 2, 10 on 1. So these punks are starting to wage a war in order to protect their market share and extreme profit margins.
To H#$@ with them.
-Chris