House committee hears textbook bill

By Elliot Njus

Published March 7, 2008

A Missouri House committee heard testimony Tuesday on a bill that aims to lower textbook costs and one that would place transparency requirements on UM system development.

The Textbook Transparency Act, sponsored by Rep. Jake Zimmerman, D-Olivette, would require textbook publishers to make all items in a textbook bundle available separately and disclose the cost of the textbooks to professors choosing class materials.

In a House Higher Education Committee hearing, Zimmerman said while the cost of education is increasing at a rate higher than the rate of inflation, the increase in the cost of textbooks outpaces both.

“It’s a real driver of the cost of higher education,” he said.

Zimmerman said his bill takes a “free-market approach” to textbook costs. He said disclosing costs to professors would help them make informed decisions about the materials they require students to purchase.

The bill would also allow students to use financial aid to pay for textbooks. Zimmerman said different institutions had different rules on the use of financial aid to pay for textbooks, and his bill would standardize the rules.

Jonathan Pollmann, a legislative intern from the Associated Students of the University of Missouri, testified in favor of the bill. ASUM is the UM system student lobbying organization.

Pullman said all of the textbooks he had purchased for classes came bundled with a workbook and a CD, and that in many cases he didn’t use the supplemental material.

He said the Missouri Higher Education Consortium, a group of student body leaders from Missouri’s colleges and universities, had supported the measure in its platform.

Mark Rhoads, a representative of publishing company Reed Elsvier, testified for informational purposes. He said his organization had some concerns about the bill but he hoped they would be ironed out during a conference call between Zimmerman and textbook publishers scheduled for Thursday.

After the conference call Zimmerman said they had addressed many of the concerns.

“We have more points of agreement than we thought,” Zimmerman said.

He said they came to an agreement on changes in the bill’s language that would clarify the pricing disclosure requirements and add options for how prices would be disclosed.

He said they also clarified language governing bundling textbooks to include only supplemental material, not “truly integrated” material.

With these changes, Zimmerman said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the Higher Education Committee will approve the bill next week.

Rhoads said Zimmerman had worked closely with the textbook publishers in creating the bill.

No one testified against the textbook bill.

The committee also heard testimony on a bill that would require the UM system to hold public meetings when developing research parks. He said he proposed the legislation in response to construction of a research park at the Missouri University of Science and Technology that closed a golf course. The course, though on university property, had been open to the community.

“The public ought to be involved in the use of these lands, and they might even have some good ideas,” he said.

Rep. Sue Schoemehl, D-St. Louis, suggested the proposal might create difficulties for universities that span several municipalities, like UM-St. Louis.

MST Chancellor John Carney said the university had held public meetings and posted its master plan at the city and county headquarters.

The research park allows private high-tech businesses to move to a location on campus. Carney said the bill would impair the UM system’s ability to build such facilities, which generate income and opportunities for students at the school.

“Right now, there’s little to keep an MS&T grad in Rolla,” Carney said.