The Board of Regents and the University System of Maryland sponsored a Textbook Affordability Summit in December. The BOR's Effectiveness and Efficiency Workgroup, led by Regent David Nevins, took up the task and has since developed a draft policy for the USM.
The Education Policy Committee will meet today at UMCP to discuss the policy. See a copy of the policy, with my proposed amendments outlined in red.
At debate will be to what extent should the BOR mandate clauses, as opposed to make broad suggestions and guidelines. The debate is rooted in two principles of delegation of authority: academic freedom for faculty and institutional autonomy.
The policy has significant implications, in light of pending state legislation (HB 85 / SB 183). The System my very well be able to stymie state regulation if the policy is broad and strict enough to meet expectations of legislators. At the same time, a strict policy may be opposed by institutional and faculty representatives.
Of note, the policy with my amendments includes regulations that:
- release textbooks selections by December 1 for Spring Semester and May 1 for the fall semesters (include ISBN, author, edition, publisher, copyright date, and title)
- ensure that faculty consider the price before assigning a book
- have faculty consider using the same textbook for multiple semesters in a row
- ensure professors only assign new editions when necessary, and have them list all editions that are acceptable for use
- encourage faculty to unbundle book selections
- permit students to access electronic versions of books
- encourage faculty to use online documents and resources in class
- encourage faculty to be judicious in selecting books
- outline the procedure for assigning "recommended" materials
- require the assignment of "integrated" textbooks to be approved by Provosts
- include the use of textbooks as a measure for course evaluations
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4 comments:
This does not help students by mandating that faculty raw adoptions get posted online before they have been checked for accuracy and validated. It actually will increase costs by not allowing bookstores to go back to faculty and ask if they would reconsider a costly adoption and go with a lower cost alternative.
The dates don't work for May 1. Institutions do not have contracts signed with adjunct faculty. When a similar mandate was required in another state, faculty submitted temporary adoptions to meet the arbitrary mandate that they knew they would change at a later date. Students have been getting burned by these false adoptions.
Federal law already requires posting when the information becomes available and is verified, which may mean before May 1 and certainly December 1.
Bottom line is students already have at least 2-4 weeks before the start of the term to shop around and thanks to HEA, most of the information will be posted weeks if not months earlier then that.
If the regents want to tackle late adoptions, they should do that through encouraging incentives to faculty as many stores do and encouraging instutions to change the way they contract with adjuncts as Colorado State has done with the urging of student and bookstore leaders that allow adoptions to be submitted before contracts are finalized.
@ Anon-- thanks for your comments. I have adjusted my draft per your feedback. Please see the link from the original post.
Josh,
Your idea to include evaluation and feedback from students to faculty on their course material selections is a great idea. Many college bookstores offer this service for students and faculty as well as a national rate the book feature.
HOWEVER, that idea runs against the May 1st deadline. Some faculty wait until they have completed finals and graded all the papers before they make a decision to go with a particular book. Last time I checked finals were still going on near the end of May. Otherwise you will be evaluating an adoption after the decision has been made for the next term.
Again, students are not well served by having raw adoption forms posted online as if they are the final adoption. It will create major confusion and bad buying decisions, not matter the disclaimer. Instead require with some limited waivers faculty to get adoptions in before campus buyback (which will differ on campuses as no uniformed calendar exists) and notify students of the guaranteed buy back -which means those books that faculty have said will be used again on campus for the next term. There is a certain level of confidence in that.
how does the amendment in the first clause, reading "In the case that a course has not been assigned a faculty member by the given deadline, textbook selection shall be conducted in an expeditious manner, and communicated to enrolled students upon selection." address the problem you have identified? I have no solution to the first problem...
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