THE ISSUE: Proposal to lower textbook costs in Mass.
WHAT WE THINK: Legislation good start, more needed
On Monday, students and lawmakers attended a Joint Committee on Higher Education hearing, where they discussed a proposal to reduce the rising cost of college textbooks in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG) has teamed with State House Rep. Stephen Walsh to draft a bill that would help to relieve some of the financial burden on students.
The bill would force publishers to provide a comprehensive list of their books, their wholesale prices, and the projected release dates of new editions. The bill would also ban "bundling" - the practice of selling textbooks packaged with additional workbooks, CDs, and other material that, if opened, can prevent resale.
This proposal is noble in its intent, if a bit limited. The bulk of the responsibility falls in the hands of campus bookstores, where the majority of students buy books at hiked-up prices.
MASSPIRG asserted that the cost of textbooks has risen nearly four times the rate of inflation over the past 10 years, attributing this to practices such as bundling and releasing barely improved, yet more expensive, editions of existing texts.
The Boston College Bookstore is filled with textbooks crammed with supplementary "learning aids" that your professor will tell you to discard - not to mention the books encased in a thin layer of cellophane that determines whether your book is worth its full price or pocket change. Yet, because the Bookstore declines to release the ISBN numbers of its textbooks through its Web site, students find it difficult to buy texts online before the semester starts.
Walsh's bill would be very beneficial since it would force publishers to sell these materials independently and leave the students with the opportunity to decide its importance.
The fact remains that the on-campus bookstores hold the cards in this issue. With the cost of books so high, totaling almost 20 percent of tuition at an average university and 50 percent of tuition at a community college, MASSPIRG states that these bookstores should make an effort to help students by selling books closer to their wholesale prices.
Though it's counterintuitive for the Bookstore to help students buy their texts elsewhere, more can be done to reduce unnecessary purchases.
2008 Woodie Awards
