Members of the Maryland General Assembly are considering legislative action to address the increasingly prohibitive costs of college textbooks in the state.
Two bills in the House of Delegates and State Senate, and one that is still being written, aim to curb the costs of textbooks by raising awareness among faculty, enforcing faculty ethics and requiring college bookstores to post International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) for required texts on the Internet.
However, some claim high textbook costs stem more from publisher practices than the actions of faculties or bookstores.
"High textbook prices are caused by the publishers," said Johanna Neumann, advocate for Maryland Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). "PIRG wants to change publisher practices. Publishers have a very powerful, effective lobby."
There are two specific publisher practices that raise prices. One is bundling, or the packaging of multimedia materials, such as compact discs and DVDs, with textbooks. According to Neumann, 65 percent of professors surveyed said they never used bundled materials, which, on average, raises textbook prices between 10 and 15 percent.
"Publishers should offer these materials individually, so professors who choose to use them may still assign them," Neumann said.
The other practice is reluctance from the publishers to disclose the price of their books when meeting with faculty.
"This prevents cost from factoring into professors' decisions when adopting textbooks," Neumann said.
The College Textbook Competition and Affordability Act of 2008, sponsored by Del. Craig Rice of the House Ways and Means Committee, takes publisher practices into account, although it does not aim to control them.
"A lot of times, publishers make a new edition of a textbook and just change the cover art. They make no substantive changes, but all the students go out and buy the new book, making the old books useless," said Alex Gudger, legislative aid to Del. Rice. "It's a burden for students to buy new books each year when it is not at all necessary."
The bill would allow faculty to select a textbook for a course, only if at least 50 percent of the material in the textbook would be used in the course. Additionally, faculty must allow students to use older editions of a textbook as long as less than 30 percent of the new edition is new or changed content.
"There are so many books with so little change. Economically and ecologically, it's mad," Gudger said. "The faculty must be aware of what has changed from edition to edition before assigning textbooks."
Richard Hershman, director of government relations for the National Association of College Stores, said this aspect of the bill would place tremendous burden on the faculties and staffs at universities.
"Finding all of the changes from one edition to the next will be incredibly labor-intensive," Hershman said. "It cannot be done by the bookstores, either. College bookstore staffs are not experts in content. That information has to come from the publishers."
Neumann explained this policy would look at changes between editions quantitatively, rather than qualitatively.
"Requiring that a certain percentage of new or changed content justify the use of a new edition is not effective. It should be up to the faculty to choose editions," she said.
"We want to develop and implement processes to make faculty aware of the textbook costs problem," Grudger said. "We're aiming at the faculty, and having the effects trickle downward."
The College Textbook Competition and Affordability Act is awaiting a bill number.
The Textbook Fairness Act, sponsored by Sen. Katherine Klausmeier and Del. Marvin Holmes, will focus on campus bookstores in addition to faculty. The bill, which is waiting for a hearing date, would require university booksellers to post ISBNs, unique codes that identify books, on the internet as soon as faculty members have adopted a book for their course. Doing so would clarify what books have been assigned for each course, and would allow students to compare when book shopping, according to Klausmeier.
"With the ISBN on hand, you know you will get the correct book," she said.
Requiring bookstores to post ISBNs immediately, however, can be a cause for confusion. Often, a bundle will contain multiple ISBNs, one for each individual component of the bundle. Sometimes, booksellers will not know the final ISBN until they have the book in stock.
"When faculty submit raw adoption forms, bookstores have to be allowed to research the textbooks for availability and accuracy of the editions," Hershman said.
"ISBNs are increasingly no longer good identifiers for college textbooks," he told the Maryland General Assembly. "If institutions publish or provide ISBN information prematurely, it can cause students to purchase the wrong books, or to purchase more expensive versions of books that might otherwise be available unbundled or used at a lower cost."
The NACS does not support the Maryland legislation in its present form.
"Bookstores don't want to be in a position where they misinform students," Hershman said.
Rebecca LaFleur, manager of the Hopkins Barnes and Noble, explained that currently, bookstores do not advise to faculty when purchasing books.
"We supply the books the faculty ask for," she said. "If there is an availability issue we will inform the faculty and may make a recommendation for a more available book. We do everything we can to stock the books the faculty ask for."
The NACS and LaFleur agree there are methods, other than the one described in the bill, for campus bookstores to lower the price of textbooks.
"Some cheap alternatives are digital format textbooks, which cost a fraction of physical textbooks," LaFleur said. "With digital books, you only pay for the intellectual property, not the physical binding."
Exempting textbooks from sales tax is a method favored by the NACS. All the states surrounding Maryland have made college textbooks exempt.
"The NACS would also like to see a stronger used book market, and universities forming textbook advisory committees," said Charles Schmidt, director of public relations for NACS. "It helps to have everyone on the same page, and make them understand there are lower cost options. Faculty need to understand that they don't have to change editions every year."
"One of my goals is to educate faculty on new editions, provide them with more options and more used options," LaFleur said.
The second provision of the Textbook Fairness Act would prohibit employees of public colleges from receiving benefits from publishers for assigning their books. However, there are few documented instances of this occurrence.
"I've only heard of this peripherally. I don't know how pervasive a problem this is," Neumann said.
Hershman echoed this: "There are not many cases of faculty ethics problems like the ones described in this bill. I have heard of publishers flying faculty to book seminars."
Klausmeier admitted the provision is mostly preventative.
Neumann and Hershman agreed both bills are well-intentioned but have flaws.
It is likely the Textbook Fairness Act will be absorbed into a more comprehensive bill, like the College Textbook Competition and Affordability.
"Del. Rice and Del. Holmes have been talking," Grudger said.
Klausmeier explained the General Assembly will be taking other methods into consideration when finalizing a bill.
"My bill will be a small part of a larger bill," she said. "Everything is being looked at. We will add things to these bills. We are bringing in people to testify on these issues."
Nothing prevents the General Assembly from creating legislation that would control private universities and publishers, according to Klausmeier.
"There are lots of ways to the same end, that end being saving students money on their textbooks," she said. "We were hoping to raise awareness. The issue of textbooks has finally caught on."
"There's no silver bullet when it comes to lowering textbook prices," Neumann said.
This legislation was inspired by a 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office, which stated that between December 1986 and December 2004, textbook prices nationwide rose at twice the rate of inflation.
Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The News-Letter.