In the Daily Cardinal article, ""Textbook Committee Superfluous,"" the editorial board argued that the creation of a shared governance committee that would focus on textbook cost would ultimately not greatly benefit students.
Let's start with a little background: The price of a new book rose from $36.48 in 2002 to $57.15 in 2010. That is an increase of about 63.8 percent in eight years alone. From a survey conducted by the Academic Affairs committee last semester over half of the students on this campus pay more than $600 per year on textbooks and over 95 percent think book costs are too high.
On top of all this, how many times at the beginning of each semester do you hear, or even say, ""I can't believe I had to pay so much on textbooks!""
We have chosen to create a sustained shared governance committee that focuses on textbook costs because we realize that textbook costs will continue to rise. These skyrocketing textbook costs and the introduction of new forms of textbooks, such as electronic books, also signal that the market is becoming more complex.
As the textbook market changes and as book prices rise, the University of Wisconsin campus community needs to be able to respond to these changes in a timely and effective manner. This committee would accomplish that.
We tried to tackle this issue, one problem at a time, but found that without support from faculty and academic staff this was a lofty project. Also, we wanted to create a long-term campus solution to these problems. In other words, since the market is changing so rapidly, the efforts we make to target a specific issue might be irrelevant in a few years.
Also, this committee ensures that even if Academic Affairs, or other major student groups on campus, decide not to target textbook costs, there would be students on campus who were.
We realized that this is not just a student issue when our survey revealed that nearly half of all students on campus have refrained from buying a book at one time or another because it was too expensive. If I were a professor and half of my students couldn't afford the book for the class I think that would seriously affect how I could teach.
We recognize the concern that this committee would not favor student interests because of student representation equal to that of both faculty and academic staff. But that is really just a critique of the entire shared governance system. There are literally dozens of shared governance committees on campus that provide student input to almost any issue regarding campus life that you can think of.
These concerns posed by the editorial board also assumes that there is some group on campus who favors increasing textbook costs or who favors positions that would hurt students. While this view might be true of publishers, there is no real antagonist on campus.
Faculty, academic staff and students are all concerned with the quality of higher education. At the end of the day, if you can't afford a book for a class, your education is harmed. And, if your professor or instructor can't teach you because of the books they assigned, then they are not providing the highest quality of education possible.
So while professor, instructor and student interests might not perfectly align, we all have the same goals in mind for this university: to provide the best possible higher education for as many students as possible and this committee is the best way to synchronize this common interest.
—Jonah Zinn
Chair Academic Affairs Committee-ASM
