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Thinking Outside the Book
You have heard the refrain from
students countless times – textbooks cost too much! In the case of the
Business Administration 120 (Business Law) textbook, that is very true.
This text retails for more than $160. The past ten years that I have been teaching BUSAD 120, I have made a number of efforts to accommodate the students’ textbook sticker shock. For example, I have delayed introducing a new edition of the text until used editions of that new version are available. Then, last semester the situation changed. In the fall of 2006, I reached a milestone in my teaching of BUSAD 120. The cumulative student enrollment in my BUSAD 120 classes since I started teaching the course in 1997 reached 1,000 students. I decided to observe this milestone by recognizing the 1,000th student with a prize. Knowing students prefer “cash” prizes, I elected to present the 1,000th student with a $100 prize. Since I was teaching three sections of BUSAD 120 in the fall of 2006, in fairness to all 130-plus students enrolled, we conducted a drawing among the students for the cash prize. Needless to say, the selected student was very, very pleased. Next, I contacted the publisher of the text and requested in recognition of this 1,000-student milestone that the publisher establish a scholarship at GCC for BUSAD students. The publisher’s representatives agreed to support establishing a scholarship in the publisher’s name, but informed me that they could not donate funds to establish the scholarship. As you can imagine, I was not happy with their response. The scholarship could have ended at this point, had I accepted their answer. Instead I told them to continue our discussions to see if we could find a way to solve the issue of funding the scholarship. After several additional discussions, we came up with a solution. I would revise the current BUSAD 120 text to make a custom text for my students. My royalty would be used to fund this new scholarship. Now for the big surprise! Because the new, revised, custom edition would be exclusive to Glendale Community College, this new edition could be produced in soft cover with fewer chapters at a much lower cost to the publisher. And the publisher, Thompson Learning, agreed to pass on a large portion of the savings to the students in the form of a nearly 50 percent reduction in the retail price of this revised text. Thus, we have a win-win solution for the college and the students. The publisher establishes and funds a student scholarship. Next, students taking BUSAD 120 classes benefit by purchasing the special edition textbooks at a greatly reduced price. The textbook, West’s Business Law, is used by all faculty who teach BUSAD 120. I thanked the publisher’s representatives for “thinking outside the book” and for developing a creative solution that lowers the textbook costs to students and provides funding for a BUSAD student scholarship. I am sharing
this story with you in the hope that you might consider contacting
publisher representatives not only to discuss options they may have
available to lower textbook costs to students, but also to
explore other possible benefits
they can provide to you, the students, and the college. |
