As the school year gets underway, college students and their parents who are fresh from the sticker shock of unlimited tuition increases are getting another jolt - the price of college textbooks, which can easily reach $500/year and sometimes approach $1,000.

The Texas Legislature had the chance to do something about these costs, but listened to lobbyists instead of students and parents.

Earlier this year, several legislators and I filed various measures to prohibit marketing practices that lead to high prices and which have destroyed much of the used book resale market for college texts. But these measures were opposed by just about everyone having an interest in keeping things the way they are. Thousands of dollars were spent on lobbyists, and, in the end, every bill on this topic was blocked by the House leadership.

My legislation targeted several practices that keep prices high. First, publishers and some professors publish a new edition of a textbook each year, making few, if any, substantive changes to the content between editions. That makes last year's used book obsolete, forcing each new class of students to buy the new version.

Second, publishers are including extra materials with each book in so-called "bundles". In most cases, the professor has no use for the extras, but the students have to purchase them anyway. And, if the seal is broken on the bundle, the book can't be returned, even if the student drops the class.

Third, university bookstores sometimes have exclusive rights to the book list for the upcoming semester's courses until just before classes start, making it difficult or impossible for students to shop around for better prices on new or used books and receive the books in time for class.

There's not much we can do to directly restrict the marketing practices of publishers, since most are located out of state beyond the reach of Texas laws. But, we can put reasonable limits on what our state universities require their students to purchase.

That's what my bill does. It would prohibit professors from requiring texts for which the publisher is unwilling to guarantee at least a three-year life cycle. And it would prohibit bundling texts with other materials unless the professor intends for students to use those materials. (Exceptions are allowed for any educational or pricing benefit.) And, book lists would be required to be made available with sufficient time for students to shop around.

In preparing the bill, some professors told me they were able to cut costs for their students without sacrificing quality simply by paying attention to book prices. So I added a provision to the bill requiring professors to know and consider the price of each textbook they select. It would not require them to pick the lowest priced book, only that they look at the pricing when making their choices.

Student government leaders from across Texas testified in favor of my bill when it was before the House Committee on Higher Education. But the bill sat without a vote for several weeks, and then was brought back for a very unusual second set of testimony. At the second hearing, the manager of the UT Coop Bookstore, who had testified in favor of the bill at the first hearing, changed his testimony and testified against the bill. The Coop spent at least $10,000 to hire a lobbyist to help them defeat the bill.

Follet, and Barnes & Noble, which have exclusive contracts to operate many college bookstores in Texas, also hired lobbyists to help them defeat this legislation. And, the Texas Faculty Association lobbied against the bill, arguing that professors have no responsibility in this issue, and should not be required to know the prices of books. Even when I demonstrated that the price for a typical textbook could be found with just a few keystrokes on the Internet, they still insisted that this would be too much of a burden on professors.

On a brighter note, Houston Community College passed its own policy mirroring the provisions of my bill, at the urging of board member Jay Aiyer. But the action of one community college district will not likely change the pricing practices of the industry, whereas the combined purchasing power of all state universities in Texas could have a much greater effect.

I hope to continue to work on this issue. You can help by letting your state legislator know that you want an end to unfair pricing practices in college textbooks. If you are a student or parent who has experienced these practices or others, please let us know by filling out a short survey posted by the Harris County Young Democrats at http://www.harriscountyyd.org/id28.html.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Sincerely,

Scott Hochberg
State Representative
District 137 - Southwest Houston