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Textbooks: A Value Proposition
11/13/2007
Editor’s note: Where do you stand on the digital textbook debate? E-mail us at editors@campus-technology.com; select responses will be published in our March 2008 issue.
- Jim Sayer, Wright State University’s (OH) faculty senate president, is a master rhetorician and teacher of that fine art, too. Leading a discussion among the faculty senators on the relentless rise in the cost of text books, compounding at more than 6 percent per annum for the last two decades (per the US Government Accountability Office), he set the stage: “I’ve taught Aristotle for 38 years. Every three years I do so from a different textbook, and it always is more expensive for my students,” and then posed this set of questions: “Why? What’s going on here? Do we have a strategy for getting these costs under control?”
- Although textbook costs are just one contributor to the escalating costs of higher education, “making textbooks affordable” has become a rallying cry for concerned faculty, financial aid officers, and student organizations around the country.
Sayer’s rhetorical questions, the financial aid counselor’s spreadsheets, and the students’ ire are echoed in more formal language in a preliminary bill focused on textbook pricing about to emerge from the Ohio Senate . Modeled on similar legislation drafted in Minnesota, the proposed bill focuses on three broad deliverables: easily navigated textbook websites with clearly priced and unbundled learning assets available for individual purchase; early forewarning of forthcoming new textbook editions that would depress or eliminate the used book market for current versions of texts; and exploration of alternatives to traditional publishing and distribution methods (textbook rental programs, custom publishing, and eTextbooks are offered as three examples). The Minnesota and Ohio explorations follow initiatives in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, Oregon, and Washington, and at last count 25 other states with variants on these three themes or other proposed remedies (
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