A handful of students gathered in the College of Arts and Sciences building Wednesday night to hear the Boston University chapter of the Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group discuss overpriced textbooks on campus and give information on how to become effective activists.
Nationwide, the PIRG group has been running a campaign against overpriced textbooks since the movement began at the University of California at Irvine last year. The group has compiled an extensive report, “Rip-Off 101,” aimed at stopping unnecessary new editions and the practice of “bundling” by publishers to raise prices.
One example cited by the report is the Thomson Learning publishing company’s Calculus: Early Transcendentals, for which a new edition was released after four years. The book’s new edition simply rearranged chapters and provided new problem sets, but costs six times as much as a used copy of the old edition. Five hundred mathematicians from more than 150 universities agreed that the new edition was unnecessary.
As one professor noted in the report, “calculus has not changed significantly in 250 years.”
Working against the publishers, PIRG has pursued a strategy of extensive media coverage and has built a network of concerned faculty and administrators to put pressure on publishers.
PIRG was successful in California, where several colleges in the UC system worked out a 20 percent reduction in prices for campus bookstores. In Massachusetts, several publishers were called to testify before the state legislature about their questionable practices, and future legislation is expected.
PIRG has developed a website, CampusBookSwap.com, where students can exchange old textbooks free of charge. The group recommends using websites including Amazon.com to find cheaper books and has launched the website MakeTextbooksAffordable.com.
The textbook campaign is only the most recent part of an ongoing effort to reduce the cost of higher education, including the “Stop the Raid on Student Aid” campaign, which kept $13 billion in financial aid funds from being cut by Congress, and the Student Debt Alert program seeking to help students understand and avoid excessive debt while in college.
The event also focused on how students can get more involved in activism, the main point being to attain media coverage for events. PIRG discussed how factors including the date of an event, location and the audience for the campaign can affect how much coverage it will receive.
MassPIRG Organizing Director Andy MacDonald said the event was held because the issue of overpriced textbooks is important.
“The more students and the more campuses that know about it, the better,” he said. “I think, also, the more events like this we can have that get students realizing not just that textbooks are a problem, but that there’s a solution and that you can actually do something about it is important.”
CAS senior Jesse Cammarata said he came to the event because “the textbooks issue is one that affects everybody.”
MassPIRG BU chapter Campus Field Organizer Leighanne Cole said the chapter is in its first year and only has 10 core volunteers, but she would like to see the group grow in the future.