News-Letter

The prices that students pay for textbooks are exorbitantly high, adding to the excessive costs of a college education.

This does not need to be the case. The legislation currently moving through the Maryland General Assembly addresses this problem. While it does not affect private institutions like Hopkins, the University should implement parts of the legislation as University policy.

However, the current legislation, the Textbook Fairness Act working through the Assembly sponsored by Sen. Katherine A. Klausmeier and Del. Marvin Holmes, does not seem to offer much for Maryland universities. It's simply a cosmetic bill that enacts policies that are for the most part already in place or adhered to.

The bills sponsored by Del. Craig Rice and Sen. Joan Carter Conway, however, do offer valuable reforms that the University should consider.

The University should establish a policy of maximizing options for its students. To do this the University should urge departments to allow students to buy older editions of textbooks. Many textbooks go into new editions each year despite few changes in the actual text. For this reason departments should offer students a wide array of options when it comes to textbooks, allowing them to shop around for older or different editions.

With this policy in place, the bookstore will be more willing to buy back older editions of textbooks from students at higher prices. Simply accepting last year's editions would put money back into the hands of students and allow students in later years to purchase cheaper texts.

The University should also use its long term relationships with its publishers and lobby them to lower the prices of textbooks.

Also the University should address the issue of text requirements. The bills sponsored by Rice and Conway require that 50 percent of a textbook must be used in a class in order for it to be required reading. This seems to be a sensible policy considering that many students end up forced to buy a 250-page book for 11 or so pages of reading.

We support the provision in the new legislation to call on Maryland to make textbooks exempt from the sales tax. Maryland is the only Mid-Atlantic state not to have this exemption. Textbooks are a necessary purchase for a student's education, and the state should recognize that students and their families are struggling enough already without having to pay the sales tax on educational materials.

The University has a responsibility to address the high costs of textbooks. There are sensible, practical reforms that exist and the University should commit itself to make textbooks as affordable as possible.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools