Terrific news. Textbook prices for Maryland college students are falling. The exciting part for me? State legislation may deserve a lot of the credit.
One of my early legislative tasks was to participate in a joint House-Senate hearing on textbook prices, one that was mandated by a bill passed in the 2007 regular session. At the hearing, we heard testimony about ways the publishing industry ensures that students buy new textbooks and how it undermines used booksellers. One particularly effective tactic is to frequently issue new editions of textbooks, so that texts are deemed obsolete after only one or two semesters. In some instances, these new editions consisted of few changes other than the art on the cover.
The hearing made painfully clear that professors serve as the unwitting accomplices of the profiteering publishers. Academics were accustomed to simply selecting the “best” texts, without regard to whether the incremental benefits of certain texts outweighed the incremental expense to students.
In 2009, the legislature passed a new bill, one that required Maryland universities to take certain steps to ensure that the textbook selection process would take cost into account, and would facilitate competition among booksellers.
It’s great to read, then, this comment:
P.J. Hogan, associate vice chancellor for government relations for the University System of Maryland and a former senator, described this change in the faculty’s mindset as “cultural.”
“Now the faculty has to think about, ‘Is this the best thing at the best price to deliver the content of the course?’” Hogan said. “Students now have a lot more options, and are getting more options as time goes on.”
In a time when many students are incurring debt and struggling to find work, it’s great to see that our efforts to keep costs down for students are having decisive and early success.
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