Textbook Legislation Passes

The General Assembly considered an amended bill in the House and Senate late last Thursday and passed it in both chambers.  Most problems have been removed from the bill, although university bookstores are required to hand over unconfirmed textbook selections to private, off-campus bookstores one week after the original submission by faculty.

Legislative leaders bypassed the traditional "conference committee" process (described in a previous post ), and simply developed a back-room compromise.  This procedure allowed for the bill to advance late in the session.  (Recall that recent days have been swamped by a discussion of a screening of a porn film at UMCP).  The new bill addresses a number of amendments that I had concerns with but still places an undue burden on campus-based bookstores of turning over information to private bookstores prematurely.  I believe this could have an unintended consequence of raising book prices for students.

Yet, the bill contains a number of positive components for students, warranting its passage:

• guarunteed ISBN publication to students
• publication to students prior to the week before classes
• requirements on publishers in providing information to faculty
• a process that has faculty consider a number of factors in selecting a textbook, including the cost, content revisions in a textbook, and the necessity of supplementary materials

Combining the federal legislation passed in Fall 2008, the USM Board of Regents policy passed in February 2009, and the new state legislation, students have been well served in enacting policy to lower the cost of textbooks.

Check out this article in the Diamondback highlighting the passage.