What's New
On November 15th, the House Education
and Labor Committee included significant legislation to lower the cost of
textbooks for students in their higher education reform legislation. The College Opportunity and Affordability Act
mandates that publishers provide the price of textbooks when they market them
to faculty, that they sell textbooks unbundled from their accompanying
workbooks and cd-roms, and that schools provide students with class book lists
during the prior semester to facilitate shopping. The House of Representatives will vote on the
full bill during this winter.
Overview
Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks—20 percent of
tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community
college. Textbook prices have increased at four times the rate of
inflation since 1994 and continue to rise.
Our research
demonstrates that the rising costs of textbooks is not inevitable, and
that policy solutions exist to make textbooks part of an affordable
college education. Publishers produce new editions of textbooks every 3
and a half years—even in fields where information hasn’t changed
significantly like math and chemistry. New editions prevent faculty and
bookstores from using the old edition.
Publishers also “bundle”
lots of extras with their textbooks—CD-ROMs and workbooks that drive up
prices and make books harder to resell.
Professors and college
administrations can do a lot to to rein in high prices, but Congress
should require publishers to curb practices that drive up the cost of a
college education.
