The House Education Committee (HEC) voted unanimously in favor of advancing a bill to lower the cost of textbooks. The Illinois Student Association (ISA) plans to hold a lobby in Springfield on April 9 to advocate the bill and other issues affecting higher education. The HEC’s approval of the bill is an important first step toward becoming legislature, and it is currently on its way to the House floor.
If the bill gets approved by the House, then book publishers would be required to disclose all pricing information to faculty members when they are selecting class textbooks. This would mean that teachers would be informed up-front about the wholesale prices of the books, other recent editions of the book, what changes were made between editions and the prices of any alternative formats that may exist.
The other issue addressed in the bill is that of textbooks sold exclusively in packages and bundled up with CD-ROMs, workbooks or internet program passwords.
According to Frank Calabrase, a member of the SGA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Bundling is a nuisance because it forces students to buy materials they often don’t use.” Books that are available only in these bundles are often difficult for students to sell back. The bill would require that books that are currently only available in bundles be sold individually as well.
According to Jessie Kallman, Student Trustee for Western Illinois University, “The book publishers [have been] exploiting students for years because of the way the textbook market functions. The professors choose books without considering the cost, and the students are the ones who get stuck with the bill. This way, the publishers get to charge us as much as they want, especially for newly published books.”
Kallman also urged all students of higher education to show their support for the bill and the ISA by attending the lobby day on April 9. The ISA hopes to bring together students statewide to lobby for higher education reform. The ISA plans on addressing issues concerning textbook costs, state funding and rapidly increasing tuition prices. Ultimately the goal of the ISA is to make higher education more accessible and affordable for all students.