I've been teaching undergraduate classes since 1975 in a variety of settings: state universities like ASU and SUNY and Florida International; community colleges in Mesa, north and south Florida and New York City; a Catholic university and a Jewish college; an art school; technical institutes; private universities large and small. I've also been a faculty member and administrator at two law schools.
There have been numerous changes in higher education since I started teaching a generation ago but two of the biggest have placed great financial burdens on students and their families: the incredible rise in the cost of tuition -- and the outrageous inflation in textbook prices.
As today's New York Times editorial, "That Book Costs How Much?" notes,
College students and their families are rightfully outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s, mainly because of marginally useful CD-ROMs and other supplements. A bill pending in Congress would require publishers to sell “unbundled” versions of the books — minus the pricey add-ons. Even more important, it would require publishers to reveal book prices in marketing material so that professors could choose less-expensive titles.
That bill is H.R. 3512, the College Textbook Affordability and Transparency Act, introduced last year by the late Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN).
"Students are suffering from sticker shock after going through their colleges' bookstores," Rep. Carson said last year, just a few months before her death from cancer. "This bill addresses many of the concerns we have heard related to this issue, and it assures transparency in textbook pricing. It seeks to bring the market's stakeholders together for the benefit of students."
Rep. Carson's co-sponsors -- Reps. David Wu (D-OR), Steve Kagen (D-WI), Robert Scott (D-VA) and Darlene Hooley (D-OR) -- want this bill to pass not only to help students and their families but as a tribute to a congresswoman who, even as she was dying, cared about middle-class and working-class Americans enough to devote her final days in Congress to this needed legislation.
The contrast with uncaring Rep. Jeff Flake, who opposes this bill because it offends his extremist laissez-faire ideological principles, could not be more stark.
Jeff Flake knows this bill will reduce expenses at least a little for the families of college students. But he doesn't care, because it regulates business.
And in Jeff Flake's hard-hearted view, it's more important that even money-grubbing multinational corporations be unfettered than that families of students at Chandler-Gilbert Community College and Arizona State University and Central Arizona College and Mesa Community College and all over the U.S. save a dime.
Okay, this bill will not solve all the problems of textbook inflation. The Times editorial rightly suggests that colleges make more use of cheaper digital textbooks, which I do when I can; ASU Geography Prof. Ronald Dorn did a study that suggests that students using free online textbooks do just as well in their classes as students with expensive copies from traditional publishers.
But H.R. 3512, endorsed by the American Association of University Professors, is a good start in helping cash-strapped students and their families get relief from exorbitant textbook prices.
As Paradise Valley Community College nursing student Khoi Le told the PVCC Puma Press, high textbook prices cause students to lose study time because they have to work extra hours in order to pay for their textbooks.
Unfortunately, Rep. Jeff Flake will do everything he can to prevent this bill from becoming law.
You don't need an expensive textbook to teach Jeff Flake a lesson this November.
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