Students may find relief from hefty costs of textbooks
Students might pay less for their textbooks next semester if the Associated Students of Colorado are successful in pushing legislation through the state senate to ease rising book costs.
Members of the ASC met with Sen. Ron Tupa (D-Boulder) and Rep. John Kefalas (D-Fort Collins) on Jan. 16 to introduce SB08-073, also known as the Textbook Affordability Act. The act proposes measures that could provide slight relief to textbook prices as early as Aug. 8 if the senate passes the bill.
Hadley Brown, vice chair of the ASC and a 5th-year senior studying English, said the bill was mainly an ASC initiative and is working toward making textbooks more affordable by requiring publishers to provide the option to sell textbooks unbundled, and if asked by the professor, to reveal the cost of textbooks prior to them being ordered.
Some textbooks currently come “bundled”, meaning that the textbook is also packaged with an additional entity such as a CD-ROM or study manual.
“The Textbook Affordability Act would make it so the professor could have the option to order only the textbook,” Brown said.
According to the National Association of College Stores , the College Board reported that students spent on average between $801 and $904 for books and supplies during the 2005-2006 academic year.
Many students are discovering this to be an unpredicted financial burden.
Hannah Peiffer, a junior humanities major, said she spent between $500 and $600 on textbooks this semester. She said students are often surprised at the high costs of textbooks.
“Textbooks are a huge expense that most students aren’t forewarned about,” Peiffer said.
Freshman history major Alex Hoffman said he spent around $400 on textbooks alone this semester, an amount that he mainly had to pay for himself.
“The cost of books was a lot more than I expected,” Hoffman said. “My student loans didn’t even cover the expenses, so most of the cost came from my own pocket.”
For students like Hoffman and Peiffer, the Textbook Affordability Act could assist by lowering the cost of textbooks.
Pamela Mills, manager of the CU Bookstore, said the bill would give professors and instructors a choice to have students purchase only what was needed for their classes.
“This particular piece of legislation gives the faculty the option to purchase the necessary materials for their class,” Mills said.
Mills also said that the bill would not affect the CU Bookstore’s main objective of providing students with the necessary materials for class.
“Our first goal is to ensure that the information needed for students for their classes is available and affordable,” Mills said. “If an unbundled textbook is appropriate for the class, then it should be sold unbundled.”
The exact dollar amount that could be saved by purchasing unbundled versus bundled textbooks is unknown, Mills said, yet it could prove to be a substantial amount less or it could even increase the cost.
“In some instances [unbundled books] would cost a substantial amount less,” Mills said. “But some books are meant to be sold with another component, so that if it is purchased unbundled, it might even cost more.”
Despite the uncertainty of how much students would save on unbundled textbooks, Hoffman said he is optimistic about the money he could potentially save.
“I’m sure that I will save extra money by purchasing a book without a CD I would have never used in the first place,” Hoffman said.
Brown said that faculty support for the bill is across the board.
“Not everyone is on the same page,” Brown said. “For some schools, it seems like there’s a lot more support than other schools.”
Mills said while there is a lot of support toward reducing textbook prices, there is also a fear of reducing the academic level of textbooks.
“Books are expensive and a lot of people are trying to take measures to lower the costs,” Mills said. “But at the same time, we don’t want to sacrifice the level of education.”
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Sara Fossum at sara.fossum@colorado.edu.
