In August of 2008, the US Congress passed the re-authorized Higher Education Opportunity Act. Among its many provisions, one specifically seeks to combat the “hidden cost” of course materials by requiring the disclosure of all the required and recommended textbooks for each course and their prices.
HEOA Section 133.d.1 requires institutions of higher education to “disclose, on the institution’s Internet course schedule and in a manner of the institution’s choosing, the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and retail price information of required and recommended college textbooks and supplemental materials for each course listed in the institution’s course schedule used for preregistration and registration purposes” (Sec. 133.d.1).
The new requirement raises a number of questions of how schools will technically meet their obligations. At most schools with campus bookstores, the bookstores rather than the institutions collect book information. But, by and large, the bookstores do not have access to the course schedule.
While institutions may decide to require their faculty to submit their course reading lists along with their course descriptions, many bookstores will tell you that faculty often submit their course reading lists very close to the beginning of the term, making it infeasible, or very difficult, to have updated reading lists included in the course description.
Some of the big SISs have suggested to institutions that they’ll be coming out with a solution to HEOA, but, as far as we’ve been able to tell, there’s been very little transparency on how their solution will work. If it simply provides additional fields for book information to be connected to a course, it will do little to help the bookstore be integrated into the HEOA process and won’t be particularly intuitive for faculty.
In light of all these players and the varying needs of each school, we’ve developed web-based software, BookLink Enterprise, that uses Search-and-Select tools for faculty to easily create their reading lists. We then use embeddable links to those course reading lists that can be uploaded into your SIS or integrated in your course schedule so that the reading list will always be up to date, even if faculty change assigned books just a few weeks before the term.
Now, one big question will be how bookstores survive in an environment where students can look up their books online from the course schedule. It’s inconceivable that bookstores won’t have to adapt to a new climate of competition – and survival seems heavily dependent upon providing competitive prices along with the added value and convenience of the local campus store. Stores might even want to consider ways that they can make online registration a point of sale for them, or gain affiliate revenue from online price comparison.
College book stores competitive behavior and price comparison will play very much into my next post on textbook affordability.
