Students who pay hundreds of dollars for expensive textbooks may not have to pay as much in the future. Student senators are going to lobby the state legislature to pass a new law that would require textbook publishers to inform professors and faculty of the prices of their books before they decide which book to use for a class.

Alex Treaster, director of the Student Legislative Awareness Board, said the senators wanted to lobby for something other than general higher education issues on Higher Education Day, Feb. 13. He said he was lobbying to increase competition between textbook publishers and decrease book prices.

“A lot of times there are better deals out there,” Treaster said.

States like California, Massachusetts and Washington already have textbook laws similar to the one the Student Senate is advocating. Treaster said a study in Massachusetts showed that 63 percent of the 237 professors asked did not typically know the price of the books they were looking at.

Aline Silva, Sao Paulo, Brazil, sophomore, paid $245 for her science textbooks. She is a double-major in pre-med and religious studies, and noticed a price difference between the textbooks required for larger classes and smaller books for smaller classes.

“I don’t spend half as much on religious studies books as I do chemistry books, and I buy more religious studies books,” Silva said.

Hannah Love, student body president, said students often thought the high book prices were the fault of the bookstore, but said the biggest percentage of money went to the textbook publishers.

Bill Madel, textbook manager at the Jayhawk Bookstore, said the bookstore was forced to pay whatever the publishers told them to pay. Madel, a 1999 graduate, said he paid $100 for a Spanish textbook bundle when he was in college. Now, the same bundle costs $200.

Madel said publishers kept raising prices and producing new editions to get money out of their investment.

“If the publishers had their way, nothing would be buy-back,” Madel said. “Everything would be one-use only.”

Love said professors were using new editions of textbooks with high-resolution photos, all of which raise the price of a textbook. She said that for a course that concentrates on pictures, like art history, high-resolution photos may be necessary, but other courses did not need high quality photos.

“Professors can get a book that will save students $50,” Love said. She said informing professors of prices would help make the textbook market more competitive and bring book prices down.

Craig Martin, professor of biology, is no stranger to competing textbook companies. When he considers textbooks for his Biology 100 class, he routinely looks at textbooks from different companies.

“I have 1,000 students and I’d like to save them some money,” Martin said.

Martin considers the price, accuracy and completeness of information, writing style and illustrations in a book when choosing which book to assign the class.

“I literally set texts side-by-side and read a passage and decide which book is better,” Martin said.

Martin said pricing information was readily available to professors considering books. Professors only have to ask for a price and they will be told.

Joe Heppert, professor of chemistry, said he didn’t see it as a problem for faculty to know prices of books, but price did not determine which book a professor chose.

He said for most professors, the primary decision would come down to which textbook serves the students best. He said they wanted students to have the best knowledge for the subject they were learning, even if a book was slightly more expensive than another available option.

“I’m not sure a law is going to work to expand the number of faculty that looks at price,” Heppert said. “It may add additional information and help with balancing the quality of the text with its cost.”

Rep. Barbara Craft (R-Junction City), member of the Education Committee, said it was a good idea for a professor to be aware of the price of a book, but if a better-quality book is available, it should be considered as well.

“I don’t know if price should be a guiding factor,” Craft said.

David Hakensen, spokesperson for textbook publisher Pearson, said developing a textbook could cost up to $1 million, which included payment of authors, experts, editors, researchers, reviewers and designers. He said prices were also affected by the cost of raw materials like paper and fuel. He said inflation is responsible for 77 percent of the increase in textbook prices.

He said students had the ability to purchase cheaper alternatives to expensive textbooks, such as simple black-and-white editions, loose-leaf editions, or digital versions of the textbooks. These options can be half the price of the hardcover textbook.

He said the company made pricing information available on the Internet.

“If you see the amount of information that publishers already make available to faculty and students about pricing and revisions, a law is probably unnecessary,” Hakensen said in an e-mail.

—Edited by Madeline Hyden