Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks, which is 20% of
tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community
college! And the prices keep going up.
We think that textbooks
should be reasonably priced, students should be able to easily sell
their books and used books should be easy to find.
Around the
country, students and professors are fighting back. They're refusing to
buy books from publishers unless they're cheaper, unbundled and on the
market for longer. They're trading books with each other at online book
swaps like CampusBookswap.org. Some professors are even switching to
open textbooks, which are free online and affordable to print.
And
publishers are feeling the heat: they're negotiating deals with faculty
who push and scrambling to offer lower priced books. But they're not
working fast enough. New competition like the open textbook publisher
Flat World Knowledge and increasing faculty demand could send
publishers a message they can't ignore - make textbooks affordable!
California's Accountability in College Textbook Publishing Practices
To
come up with effective, reasonable solutions to the problem of rising
textbook costs, PIRG students surveyed 287 professors. The resulting
report of our findings, Exposing the Textbook Industry, found that textbook publishers are not disclosing price information clearly to faculty.
77
percent of faculty said that textbook marketing representatives rarely
or never volunteer the price of their books. Even when professors asked
directly for the price in a sales meeting, only 38 percent of the
professors said they always got an answer. As a result, only 63 percent
of faculty surveyed told us that they usually know the price of the
books they assign.
CALPIRG is currently supporting legislation authored by Senator Calderon – the Accountability in College Textbook Publishing Practices Act (SB 388). SB 388 would help create the right conditions for price competition to occur, the best way for us to force textbook prices down. The bill would require publishers to disclose their prices and revision cycles to professors when marketing textbooks, and ensure that publishers stick to those prices for the next semester. The bill would also require publishers to offer all textbook “bundles” as separate books and supplemental items so students can purchase only the materials they need.
SB 388 reinforces and strengthens similar Federal legislation by closing potential loopholes and ensuring publisher accountability. The bill just moved out of committee and is headed to a vote on the Senate floor.
Click here to read the testimony of Levi Menovski, a CALPIRG student intern, at the Senate Education Committee hearing in Sacramento.
