College Textbook Bill Should Be Passed
By: Our Opinion
Posted: 2/15/08
The House passed the College Textbook Affordability Act of 2007 on Feb
7. This is a definitive step in the right direction. Once the president
signs the act, college students everywhere should celebrate in full
force.
By signing the act, members of the House finally acknowledged that
college students are a major part of their constituencies and chose to
act in their best interests, instead of the interests of corporations.
It's about time.
The act requires textbook publishers to provide college professors with
the price of textbooks the professors are considering for their
courses. This will allow professors to decide if an expensive textbook
is worth the hundreds of dollars it will cost students, versus getting
a different version or similar text that is cheaper.
During the first week of a semester, when professors seem astonished at
how much students had to pay for the texts, they are being sincere. As
of now, publishers are allowed to hide the costs of textbooks from
professors, even if the professors specifically ask how much a textbook
costs.
The act also requires publishers to disclose the revisions in new
editions of textbooks. This way professors can decide whether it is
vital to the course for the new book to be purchased, or if students
can purchase the older version with an additional supplement, if
necessary.
Another stipulation of the act requires that publishers disclose
whether the text is available in other formats, such as paperback or
unbound, and the costs associated with those versions. This gives
professors more freedom and allows them to opt out of assigning a
hardcover text, which can be far more expensive to students with
limited funding and multiple course loads.
The act also requires publishers who sell bundled textbooks to sell the
textbooks separate from any accompanying supplemental material, which
relieves the burden on students who are usually forced to pay for a CD
or DVD, which is often completely ignored and irrelevant to the course
work but costs an additional $20 more than the textbook itself.
The passage of the College Textbook Affordability Act is positive. This
act greatly benefits students, professors and university bookstores.
Students will be more likely to buy their textbooks at a university
bookstore if they are reasonably priced, and the university will still
make the same amount of profit off the textbook. Professors will be
happier because students will be less likely to complain about paying
for excessive, and oftentimes, unnecessary course material. The only
group the passage of this act could possibly adversely affect is
textbook publishers. The president should move forward and sign the act
into law.
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