Students, faculty work to lower book costs

Students could get more money if professors promise to re-use their books.

By Belinda Kocen

Published Oct. 10, 2008

Staff and students rallied Thursday night to lower the cost of textbooks.

A Course Materials Advisory Group formed with the goal of lowering these costs for students. Director of Retail Services Sherry Pollard said she hopes to explore what options for other programs and improvements the bookstore as well as faculty can make to lower costs.

The bookstore guarantees students a 50 percent rate for buyback books that faculty specify in their adoption rates. This is only possible if the faculty get the list of books for the following semester to the bookstore on time, Student and Auxiliary Services Michelle Froese said.

One student might get $10 on a book while his or her classmate who sells it three weeks later might get $40. This is because a faculty member might have turned in his or her adoption rate late and the bookstore realizes it can sell the book again to students on campus.

"This causes some stress between students," Pollard said.

Some of the faculties' problems arise from the fact that they do not teach the same course multiple semesters in a row, biology professor John David said.

Deputy Provost Ken Dean said he would work with Pollard to create a useful mass publicity for the faculty especially because the information might be taken more seriously than if it came from the bookstore.

"The most effective slogan must be something about how professors can save students money," Dean said.

Missouri Students Association senator Phyllis Williams said many professors might not want to help the bookstore because they feel like there is not enough transparency within the sales. She said it must be communicated that when faculty turn in their adoption rates on time it helps not only students who buy materials from the bookstore, but also those who purchase from outside sources.

In response to the idea that the bookstore is not transparent, Froese said some bookstores refuse to share their profit margins with the public. The MU bookstore allows that information to be public. She said that the current profit margin is 25 percent on new books.

Besides asking faculty to provide their adoption rates on time, MSA Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays said he would like to have access to the differences in content revisions for new editions of books.

MSA senator Craig Stevenson said the Textbook Transparency Act, which was signed into law this summer, requires publishing companies to provide substantial content revisions made between a current textbook edition and the previous edition upon the request of faculty.

Pollard said she would be open to ideas that would encourage and educate faculty about how their decisions would impact students' costs.

The committee set a few goals for the next meeting. Mays said he wanted to start a larger buyback campaign by using the chancellor and provost offices to get information out.

"We can get the information out by next week," Dean said.

Another goal is to talk with faculty about possibly committing to a single text for a minimum of about three years. Pollard said this would allow the bookstore to buy enough books to create a rental system on campus for students.

Pollard said only 39 percent of all adoption rates were submitted on time from professors. With the new publicity the students and Dean are planning they are hoping to raise this percentage.