Rival Bookstore Sues WVU Bookstore for $2 Million Monopoly

A bookstore that serves the students of West Virginia University (WVU) has sued the university and Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc. for monopolizing the textbook sales market in the WVU area.

The Book Exchange filed the suit on June 8, claiming that WVU’s practice of withholding a portion of students’ financial aid money for use specifically at school bookstores limits the choices students have for purchasing cheap textbooks. The practice of withholding financial aid money began in August 2005, right before a lease contract between WVU stores and Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc. was renewed for a second five-year term in 2006.

According to the lawsuit, WVU sent an email to its students on Dec. 13, 2005 informing them that “an amount up to $500 has been reserved on account at the bookstore.” Students that did not want the bookstore to take that money were to remove themselves from the program by Dec. 16. Students who did not remove themselves were unable to spend a portion of their financial aid money on textbooks from The Book Exchange or any other textbook-purchasing alternative.

In the lawsuit, The Book Exchange accuses WVU of violating West Virginia Code by redirecting students’ financial aid money to the campus bookstore and preventing them from obtaining the textbooks at lower-cost alternatives like The Book Exchange. The suit also alleges that the automatic withholding of funds was intended to monopolize the market of selling textbooks to financial aid students.

The Book Exchange is seeking more than $2 million dollars from the defendants for lost revenue and punitive damages.

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Source:

Bailey, Cara. “Bookstore sues WVU for monopoly, seeks $2 million.” The West Virginia Record 15 June 2007. 19 June 2007. http://www.wvrecord.com/news/196757-bookstore-sues-wvu-for-monopoly-seeks-2-million

Textbooks Used to Promote Global Peace

Educational experts from Europe and the Arab states are meeting on June 14th and 15th to discuss the instructional design of textbooks that encourage peace-building and global citizenship. The meeting, titled “Thinking and Building Peace Through Innovative Textbook Design,” is sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

According to the UNESCO, the 25 researchers, textbook authors and textbook publishers aim to “produce guidelines for promoting peace and intercultural understanding through curricula, textbooks and learning media within the UNESCO-ISESCO Cooperation Programme.” The discussions are to focus on practical ways of incorporating the concepts, attitudes and skills for global understanding into textbooks and other learning materials. The meeting will also serve as support for actions already in place for content analysis and revision of textbooks in the two regions.

UNESCO/IBE’s publication Textbooks and Quality Learning for All: Some Lessons Learned from International Experiences (2006, Eds Cecilia Braslavsky and Katya Hall) will be launched during the meeting.

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Source:

Bernard, J.. “Experts discuss textbooks as instruments for peace.” United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization . 14 Jun 2007. http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=53469&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Technology Costs Students, Then Saves Them

Technology has once again proven to be friend and foe. The advent of high-tech interactive learning materials has prompted its addition (along with a price increase) to college textbooks—without the consent of the average college student. On the other hand, new developments in technology are now allowing students to access e-books and other downloadable learning materials for only a fraction of the traditional textbook price, if not for free.

Critics of the textbook industry claim that the practice of bundling textbooks with special Web site access and interactive tools such as CDs and DVDs is just another excuse for raising textbook prices. The standardized bundles force students to buy bundled textbooks whether they want the interactive materials or not. Furthermore, when students go to sell the textbooks back at the end of the year, they are often either unable to do so, or have to settle for a lower buyback price because the interactive tools and Web site access can only be used once with the special code. Publishers argue that the textbook bundles are meant to enhance the learning experience by supplementing passive learning (reading) with active learning (interactive tools). Either way, bundled textbooks are here to stay and students have to pay for them.

For some college students anxious about paying skyrocketing prices for their textbooks, technology will also prove to be their saving grace. Ex-Microsoft executive Bruce Jacobsen has launched a new electronic textbook publishing house called Kinetic Books. An Introduction to Physics textbook for example, looks a lot like a regular textbook except that the chapters are enhanced with animation and videos that can demonstrate physics concepts like velocity and acceleration.

Teachers are also using technology to create a more interactive learning environment. Michigan State University biology professor Diane Ebert-May no longer uses textbooks in her classroom. She assigns an assortment of reading materials and articles to aid classroom instruction.

“Biology changes so rapidly that most of the readings in my class are not much older than 2004,” said Ebert-May. She does, however, keep some publishers’ complimentary copies of textbooks on hand in the classroom as reference materials.

CampusBooks.com is a leading supporter of technology that helps students save money on textbooks. We are proud to include e-book retailers in our list of bookstore partners that are displayed on price comparison pages. That way, when students are searching for and comparing prices on textbooks on our site, they will indeed get the lowest price possible—e-books included.

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Source:

Kingsbury, Alex. “Textbooks Enter the Digital Era.” U.S. News and World Report 08 OCT 2006 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/articles/061008/16books.htm

Government Advisory Committee Reports on Making Textbooks More Affordable

The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACSFA) submitted a report to Congress on Friday that discussed their findings about the current state of textbook affordability. The one-year study was commissioned at the request of Congressmen Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and David Wu (D-OR) in June 2006 to investigate ways to make textbooks more affordable for students. In the letter requesting the study, the Advisory Committee was asked to:

· Investigate further the problem of rising textbook prices.

· Determine the impact of rising textbook prices on students’ postsecondary education.

· Make recommendations to Congress, the Secretary, and other stakeholders on what can be done to make textbooks more affordable.[1]

The Advisory Committee determined that “all stakeholders—students, faculty, colleges, bookstores, and publishers as well—are victims of the failure of this market”[2]

The Committee found that all stakeholders had valid interests that needed to be protected when making textbooks affordable and so there is no reason to blame any one stakeholder. Instead, the main reason that textbooks are not affordable is “the underlying structural imperfection in the market for textbooks and learning materials”[3]—that is, the market is driven by supply instead of by demand. Faculty select the textbooks, the bookstores order them and students must pay for them. The end result is a market that is not driven by consumer demands, which ultimately results in a disregard for product price.

In keeping with its focus on solutions instead of blame, the ACSFA identified short-term solutions and a long-term solution to the textbook affordability problem. The eight short-term solutions are:

1. Strengthen the used textbook market

2. Utilize faculty textbook selection guidelines

3. Provide key information to students and parents

4. Increase library resources

5. Adopt alternatives that lower price

6. Implement a textbook rental program

7. Improve related financial aid policies

8. Utilize 21^st century technology

 

The long-term solution proposed by the Advisory Committee is a national digital marketplace. In theory, the infrastructure of the marketplace would consist of a transaction and rights clearinghouse, numerous marketplace Web applications, and hosted infrastructure resources.[4] The California State University is currently doing innovative work in the area of building such a digital marketplace. The initiative began in 2003 as way to “increase student and faculty success by reducing expenses for educational content, hardware, and software.”[5]

The CSU Marketplace plans to serve the technological needs of students, faculty, and staff with both no-cost and fee-based educational content. The Advisory Committee hopes that “when fully developed, CSU’s statewide solution can be the first step toward a national digital marketplace for voluntary use by other states, colleges, faculty, and students.”[6]

CampusBooks.com is following these developments very closely and we’ve made digital textbooks available on our site. The future of the textbook market is fast heading in the direction of electronic textbooks, but in the meantime, CampusBooks.com is helping students save money on books by providing a robust marketplace to buy and sell textbooks quickly and inexpensively.

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References:

[1] Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, “Textbook Study Fact Sheet.” 2007. http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/txtbkfactsht.pdf

[2-6] Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance , “Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable, MAY 2007.” Textbook Cost Study. May 2007. http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/turnthepage.pdf