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Arizona students are leading the next charge in the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign by lobbying not only for cheaper textbooks, but pushing for more alternatives, including free texts.
April 15 marked the national announcement of various state students’ associations and state branches of the Public Interest Research Group, having gathered 1,000 signatures from professors at 300 schools throughout the country, including the University of California Irvine and Duke University, in support of open textbooks.  NAU hosted Arizona’s press conference after the university obtained support from 90 professors.
Rich Williams, a senior history major at NAU and a director with the Arizona Students’ Association, said open textbooks are often books that are able to be downloaded from the Internet and printed for a fraction of the cost of a standard text.  One such lower-level Introduction To Economic Analysis text was printed for $11.10.
“The textbook market is one that doesn’t operate like other markets,” Williams said, referring to the reasoning for so many students and professors urging for alternatives. “They have practices that few other markets could get away with.”
Alyssa McKinley, ASNAU vice president of academic affairs, said textbook prices have gotten in the way of the main focus of a students’ time at NAU.
“The object of graduation takes a backseat to high prices,” McKinley said. “Textbook companies are acting like a business and not a service, and their objective is rising profits.”
McKinley said NAU already offers a great service to students to help lessen the impact of rising book prices. The BlackBoard feature through Vista allows instructors to post materials for classes.
“The less burdening of students will move student education to the forefront,” McKinley said, regarding the increased need for cheaper materials and text.
Some students at NAU have already felt the impact of high-priced textbooks and what they can do for an education.
“I’m a non-traditional student and work, so I come to class on Tuesday and Thursday,” said Paul Smith, a senior public relations major. “I’m gonna be here a while. But last semester I had to forego my biology book and it hurt my test scores, and I told the professor but he said he was lucky enough to get his own.”
Two of the total 90 professors who did sign the pledge for more open textbooks were able to attend the press conference and voice their opinion.
Zoe Hammer, a visiting assistant professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice, said the availability of cheaper textbooks is an area with a multitude of ramifications, including their role in the world’s job market.
“Students are facing unprecedented global and social change,” Hammer said. “It is most important to support the broadest range of entering higher education.  But when it’s most important we are raising tuition and graduating people with the most debt. The future of our nation depends on this (affordability aided by lower book prices.)”
Roy St. Laurent, an associate professor of statistics, said that it is the duty of professors to assist students in finding cheaper materials.
“We need to be more aware of the costs born by students,” St. Laurent said. “We need to help find alternative sources, like online homework systems or software. Not having these can severely impact the students’ ability to complete a degree.”
At this time, there are only a few out of the hundreds of textbooks available online for download. St. Laurent said he imagines the textbook companies would be against open textbooks, considering as with recent legislation in Arizona over textbook price disclosure, many lobbyists were present to modify the bill before it passed.
Still, Hammer and St. Laurent both said they have colleagues who support the bill and continue to tell other professors about the need for reduced costs as well as more open textbooks.
“As the executive director of the academic chairs council, I’ve provided all department chairs at NAU with info.,” St. Laurent said. “I’ve told them to consider signing and to share info with faculty to sign in on this effort.”
It is the hope that knowledge of and particpation in the program will spread from professor to professor.  Despite a reduced start to gaining more signatures, William said he is optimistic.
“This has been a three-year process and in that time we’ve learned some valuable lessons,” Williams said. “It’s not a great supply, but with 1,000 signatures, it’s showing there’s an interest.”
For more information on the campaign and where to obtain open textbooks, visit maketextbooksaffordable.org.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 12:18 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.