Colleagues:
Over the past several years, a nationwide movement to make textbooks more affordable has taken on momentum, based in part on the concern that the cost of higher education is so high as to make it inaccessible to many. As a University focused on access, UMUC wants to make every effort to keep education affordable, including addressing the costs of textbooks. I want to talk a little about this in the current month's blog so that you have the bigger context of the national debate when you, as faculty, are asked to participate in helping us to drive down costs.
Several external forces have recently added to the textbook cost concern:
- Higher Ed Opportunity Act--This act was recently signed into law by former President Bush, and it addresses the requirements that colleges and universities must meet in order to receive Title IV (financial aid) funds. For the first time, the Act requires that institutions take steps to control the cost of textbooks and related course materials.
- Maryland legislature--In several recent sessions, legislators have introduced bills that would mandate an upper limit on the costs of textbooks. While these bills have failed to gain the necessary support to become law, the Maryland legislature is currently considering a more comprehensive bill that would require universities, textbook publishers, and textbook vendors to take steps to reduce the costs to students. At some point it is likely that a law will be passed to this effect.
At UMUC we have been working to address this issue in several ways. We are adopting the following methods to reduce the costs of textbooks to our students:
- We ask that directors choose textbooks that optimize quality and cost to students
- We are exploring ways to negotiate reduced prices for textbooks with publishers
- We will post textbook information and ISBN numbers for textbooks as early as we can so that students can purchase from their choice of vendor
- We will work with our online bookstore (MBSDirect) to provide as many used textbooks to our students as possible and to buy back as many textbooks as possible
- We will seek to only adopt new editions of a textbook if there is substantial change to the text
- To the extent possible, we will try not to order textbooks that come "bundled" with other materials that may be of little use to students.
In future years, online texts and materials may allow for an entirely new way to provide low-cost materials to students. We will continuously monitor ways to reduce the cost of materials for students, and keep you apprised of our progress.
If you have any thoughts on how we can help keep the costs of books reasonable, we want to hear from you. Please do let us know.
~~Marie
