Students tired of paying more for textbooks every semester may soon find relief in state legislation or system-wide reform, discussion at the Textbook Affordability Summit held yesterday revealed.
The University System of Maryland is devising ways to mitigate textbook costs for students, including requiring universities to publish book lists with ISBNs before class registration, as well as considering other “out-of-the-box” approaches to the ongoing issue, Chancellor Brit Kirwan said during the summit yesterday in the Stamp Student Union.
The system-organized event attracted administrators, faculty members and a handful of students from universities across the state. Experts representing students, faculties, administrators and publishers sat on panels to discuss and answer questions about the issue of textbook affordability.
The issue is particularly relevant because, for the first time in a decade, the university’s contract with Barnes & Noble to run the University Book Center is set to expire in May.
“We are certainly going to take away ideas for steps we can take to drive down the rising costs of textbooks and put together a plan of action for the system,” Kirwan said at the summit. “The Board … will work with all of our institutions’ presidents to ensure that we post ISBN numbers early this year across the state,” he added, saying the system is taking the textbook issue “very seriously.”
“This is huge,” Sen. Jim Rosapepe (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s) said immediately following Kirwan’s announcement. Rosapepe represents College Park and co-sponsored the textbook bill last legislative session. “Hearing the system commit to publishing ISBNs early and looking into textbook reform across the board – it’s great.”
Kirwan’s announcement came as both a surprise and a relief to state legislators, who watched legislation addressing textbook affordability fall through last year due to late amendments that prevented lawmakers from reaching a last-minute consensus by the end of the legislative session.
Toward the end of the state legislative session last year, the state’s House of Delegates added two amendments favoring state universities that many senators refused to pass, saying the suggestions hurt students by not allowing for a competitive textbook market.
The proposed amendments would have given universities a bigger window of time to publish textbooks’ ISBNs and other necessary information, as well as requiring them to expose students to non-school-sponsored bookstores at freshman orientation.
Rosapepe said many state universities fought against the bill last year because they did not want to be restricted by state legislation.
But after seeing the bill fall through, Towson University and this university instituted ISBN deadlines independent of mandates from the state or the Board of Regents. Doing so gave students more time to find cheaper alternatives to buying new textbooks at the campus bookstore, students said.
“Having ISBN numbers posted is very helpful, because students can find the exact book their professors are looking for online [for less money],” Student Government Association President Jonathan Sachs said at the summit.
Textbook costs continue to rise at twice the rate of inflation, with students paying a national average of $900 per year for books, according to the Government Accountability Office report. At this university, that figure equals about 11 percent of in-state tuition and 4 percent of out-of-state tuition.
After tossing blame from publishers to faculty members to bookstores to students, all experts at the panel agreed other avenues for lowering the cost of books must be explored. Many ideas were raised throughout the discussion – which was broken up into various panel discussions – including creating custom textbooks within academic departments, unbundling course materials, eliminating course packets, using older editions of books, establishing a rental book program or going digital.
“The state has done a really good job of keeping tuition costs from rising,” Sen. Paul Pinsky (D-Prince George’s) said during the discussion. “But if a student can’t afford to go to college, it’s not going to matter. We need to make sure students can continue to afford their textbooks as well as their tuition.”
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