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Books

Schwarzenegger's Veto of the College Textbook Affordability Act: Where Do We Go From Here?

By Emily Rusch
Consumer Advocate
California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG)

We are deeply disappointed with Governor Schwarzenegger’s veto of SB 832, the College Textbooks Affordability Act. College students spend $900 a year on average on textbooks for their classes. That means some community college students could be spending more on their books than all of their other tuition and fees combined.

While we are pleased that the Governor acknowledged the importance of lower textbook prices, we are troubled by the reasons he gave for his veto. In his veto message, the Governor said that SB 832 “fails to recognize that the affordability of textbooks is a shared responsibility among publishers, college bookstores, and faculty members.”

Unfortunately, it appears that the Governor fails to recognize the root cause of the problem at hand.

It has been clearly documented many times over that the textbook market is a broken market. The person who orders the book (faculty) is not the same person who buys the book (students). Therefore, the cost of a textbook is not the primary factor during the purchasing process. Publishers, cynically aware of the immense market power this gives them, respond by withholding the price of textbooks. As has now been clearly documented by a rigorous study released by CALPIRG, 77% of faculty report that publishers rarely or never report the price of a book during sales interactions.

When price is not on the table during the time of sale, it is inevitable that the more expensive product will prevail. Therefore, the only way to correct this market imbalance is to inject price into the sales conversation – at the time of sale. SB 832 sought to correct this imbalance in the market by requiring publishers to disclose the price of a book to professors up front. This would simply require publishers to do what every other industry already must do.

In contrast, AB1548 (Solorio), supported by the textbook industry and signed by the Governor, does nothing to correct the market imbalance. Anyone who understands the market dynamics explained above knows that simply requiring publishers to disclose the price when asked rather than at the time of the sales conversation is too little too late, and has no ability to correct the market. Similarly, the other provisions of AB 1548 are irrelevant to the problem, as bookstores have no role in the selection of textbooks.

This is why the California Teachers Association, the University of California Student Association, and the Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges, urged the Governor to sign SB 832. By not doing so, the Governor failed to heed the research and recommendations of the academic community and missed a simple and important opportunity to lower textbook prices. We hope that over time, the Governor rethinks his position and reconsiders similar efforts in the future."

Emily Rusch is an Advocate with the
California Public Interest Group (CALPIRG), a statewide public interest group supports legislation aimed at honest government in California.

Posted on October 17, 2007

Comments

Why do we need a law? Why can't university faculty and administrators just demand better pricing from the publishers? If there is no one willing to buy the books the publishers will need to lower prices.

Obviously university faculty don't care about students!

Posted by: sean at October 17, 2007 09:37 AM

Don't forget, professors are the ones authoring these textbooks. Even when they're not assigning their own textbooks for a class, as a group they have an incentive to promote higher book prices, not lower. It's a good job, if you can get it!

Posted by: Patrick at October 17, 2007 07:28 PM

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