Making Textbooks More Affordable

Check out this letter from Congressman David Wu thanking OSPIRG for our work to lower textbook costs!

OSPIRG is working to lower the cost of textbooks.

This is a long term project that we started in 2004.  We knew that we couldn’t solve this problem overnight.  We also knew that if students were going to have a chance to be effective, we would need good research and solid facts.  And we also knew that Oregon students alone couldn’t change the market; that we would need to band together with students around the country. 

So we’ve done a few things over the last 4 years. 

First, we organized student PIRGs and student government associations from around the country into a national campaign, called Make Textbooks Affordable.  We hired a fulltime staffperson, Nicole Allen to run the campaign.  And we launched a joint website – www.maketextbooksaffordable.org – that is the central hub for the project.

Second, our staff and volunteers have authored seven reports that documented the ways in which textbook publishers drive up prices, and how to solve the problem.  Our research was so good that it has been covered by nearly every major news outlet in the country, and in all 50 states.  This includes the New York Times, USA Today, the Oregonian, and more.  And our work was heavily cited in both the United State Government Accountability Office and the US Department of Education’s respective reports to Congress about how to solve the problem.

Third, we have organized faculty to speak out again high textbook prices.  Our research has shown that faculty are the most important solution to the problem, since they are the ones that order textbooks.  So we organized over 700 math and physics professors from 150 universities to call on the world’s largest publisher to stop issuing unnecessary new editions of textbooks, prompting the publishing industry’s trade journal to acknowledge that they had to clean up their act.   We then organized over 2,000 faculty to sign a commitment to adopt free, Open Textbooks instead of expensive commercial textbooks.

Fourth, we have gotten the government to take action.  When the Oregon Legislature decided to take action, they turned to OSPIRG State Advocate Laura Etherton (that’s her speaking to Governor Kulongoski).  And when Congress decided to finally act, they turned to called OSPIRG Federal Advocate, Luke Swarthout (that’s him testifying before Congress). 

We advised them to pursue solutions that required publishers to disclose the price to faculty when up front.  Our research indicated that this would result in more faculty choosing cheaper books.  Now, this policy is both Oregon law AND national law. 

And although OSPIRG funds were not used to lobby for this legislation, Congressional insiders say that it was our research and advocacy over the last 4 years – here on campus and in Washington DC - that was the key force that led Congress to finally act. 

All of this is starting to pay off.  Faculty are starting to adopt cheaper books, and we’re working to accelerate the pace and scale of this trend so that it affects every single student.