The Daily Campus

Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Ben Mockalis A new law under consideration in the U.S. Senate which would save students money could also mean fewer book bundles on shelves in the Co-op.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation last week aimed at making textbooks more affordable.

House Resolution 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, passed in the House 354-58 with 17 present or not voting. It now goes on to the Senate for vote before reaching the White House for final approval.

The act, which deals with the financial component of higher education, addresses what many UConn students have been struggling with during their college career: exorbitant textbook prices.

The issue of lowering textbook prices is so important that UConnPIRG, a non-profit public advocacy group, has made it one of the group's four major campaigns.

"On average, a UConn student will pay $450 a semester on textbooks," said Kevin Wilhelm, is a 4th-semester economics major and legislative intern for campus climate UConnPIRG.

The legislation would put new pressures on colleges, universities and textbook publishers that would result in lower prices for students.

The most prominent component requires that a publisher who sells textbooks with bundled materials such as CD-ROMs, offer the textbook and supplemental material as separate items.

"The two big things in the legislation are defining a bundle and continuing off that and saying that the professors have to know that what they are getting is a bundle," Wilhelm said. "The research we've done, we have seen as much as a $30 or $40 difference per textbook with bundling or without, and on average a $10 or $20 drop."

According to research done by UConnPIRG, only 18 percent of 450 students surveyed found bundled materials to be useful.

Other requirements of textbook publishers would be that they provide faculty members with information including the price at which the publisher would make the college textbook available, the copyright dates of all previous editions, the substantial content revisions from previous editions, and whether the college textbook or supplemental material is available in any other format.

Tom Stanton, communications director for McGraw-Hill Education, a textbook publisher, said the act enforces what McGraw-Hill already practices.

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