BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 1328
Page 1
Date of Hearing: July 3, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Marty Block, Chair
SB 1328 (De Leon) - As Amended: June 26, 2012
SENATE VOTE : 26-13 (This bill has been substantially amended
in the Assembly.)
SUBJECT : Postsecondary education: textbooks.
SUMMARY : Requires a publisher to provide textbook data in
specified formats; encourages public and private postsecondary
institutions to develop faculty textbook adoption search engines
with specified functions; and requires campus bookstores at
private and public postsecondary institutions to provide a
student textbook comparison engine on their Web sites, as
specified. Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires a publisher that supplies textbooks or other
instructional materials to a postsecondary institution or a
faculty member of a postsecondary institution to provide
specified information about that textbook or item of
instructional material using a standard XML or comma-delimited
format.
a) Provide the following information in the order listed:
i) Book title,
ii) Author,
iii) Publisher,
iv) International Standard Book Number (ISBN),
v) Retail price,
vi) Edition, and,
vii) Copyright date.
b) Defines the following:
i) "Comma-delimited" as a type of data format in which
SB 1328
Page 2
each piece of data is separated by a comma,
ii) "ISBN" as the International Standard Book Number, a
numeric commercial book identifier,
iii) "Postsecondary institution" as both private and
public postsecondary institutions, and,
iv) "XML" as Extensible Markup Language, which is
designed to transport and store data.
2)Encourages public and private postsecondary education
institutions to provide a faculty textbook adoption search
engine for purposes of discovery, evaluation, and selection of
course materials that allows faculty or course coordinators to
view, compare, and contrast textbooks and other course
materials within a given subject area and to communicate their
adoption choices to the appropriate procurement staff and
colleagues.
3)Requires institutions that choose to provide a faculty
textbook adoption search engine per #3 above do all of the
following:
a) Seek out a third-party entity to create and implement
the faculty textbook adoption search engine free of charge
to the postsecondary educational institution.
b) Ensure that the faculty textbook adoption search engine
includes all of the following:
i) An automated warning system that provides faculty
and course coordinators with information on both of the
following:
(1) Textbook adoption deadlines and the potential
costs to students stemming from late adoption, and,
(2) Potential consequences related to textbook
bundling and customization that may impact student
buyback or resale options.
ii) The ability to produce reports that include, but are
not limited to, a cost index by subject area, each
faculty member's place within the cost index, and the
SB 1328
Page 3
timeliness and average on-time rating for faculty
adoption submissions. Specifies that the reports shall
be accessible to department chairs, school
administrators, and state officials, upon approval of the
faculty.
iii) Ensure that the institutional bookstore, as defined,
provides the course and adoption information pursuant to
this bill in an open protocol, using either comma
delimited format, as defined, or an application
programing interface format that allows an outside
organization or company full and free access to the
information, including but not limited to, the
department, course names, course selections, teachers of
the courses, and the title and ISBN, as defined, of each
book or material required for each course.
(1) Requires an institutional bookstore to provide
written instructions for an outside organization or
company to access the course and adoption information
and post the instructions on the institutional
bookstore's Internet Web site, and,
(2) Requires information collected by the
institutional bookstore to be made available to other
parties at the same time manner as provided to the
bookstore and shall be posted on the bookstore
premises or on the bookstore's Internet Web site.
c) Defines the following:
i) "Application programming interface" or "API" means a
type of data format that allows software components to
communicate with each other.
ii) "Open protocol" means a standard way to exchange
requests and responses that is publicly available and has
various rights of use associated with it.
4)Requires institutional bookstores, as defined, to provide a
student textbook price comparison engine on its Internet Web
site to demonstrate the price difference between a textbook
purchased through the bookstore and the same textbook
purchased through an online competitor, in order to enable
students to ensure they are purchasing the needed textbook at
SB 1328
Page 4
the best price.
a) Defines the following:
i) "Institutional bookstore" means a bookstore that is
the official bookstore of a public or private
postsecondary educational institution in the state that
may be owned and operated by the institution or operated
in a space that is leased by the institution to a
bookstore management company.
ii) "Student textbook price comparison engine" means an
online tool that displays the price difference between a
textbook offered by an institutional bookstore and by
online competitors and that provides a link through which
a student may purchase a textbook from an online
competitor if he or she desires to do so. Specifies that
the student textbook price comparison engine shall
include at least two online competitors for each textbook
offered by the institutional bookstore, or a lesser
number if two competitors do not exist.
b) Institutional bookstores at the University of California
(UC) are encouraged, but not required, to comply with this
section.
5)Creates a reimburseable state mandate if so determined by the
Commission on State Mandates.
EXISTING LAW : Numerous federal and state laws specify textbook
information that publishers and higher education institutions
must disclose.
The federal Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) requires
publishers, when providing information to faculty or others who
select course materials at an institution of higher education
receiving federal financial assistance, to include in writing:
1)The price at which the publisher would make the college
textbook or supplemental material available to a campus
bookstore and, if available, the price at which the publisher
makes the college textbook or supplemental material available
to the public.
2)The copyright dates of the three previous editions of such
SB 1328
Page 5
college textbook, if any.
3)A description of the substantial content revisions made
between the current edition of the college textbook or
supplemental material and the previous edition, if any.
4)Whether the college textbook or supplemental material is
available in any other format, including paperback and unbound
and, for each other format of the college textbook or
supplemental material, the price at which the publisher makes
such other format available to the public.
Federal HEOA law requires each institution of higher education
to:
1)Disclose in the institution's Internet course schedule, for
each course listed, the ISBN and retail price of required and
recommended college textbooks and supplemental materials.
2)Make available to a college bookstore the most accurate
information available regarding the course schedule and for
each course offered the ISBN, retail price, number of students
enrolled in the course, and the maximum student enrollment for
the course.
Existing state law:
1)Requires textbook publishers, by January 1, 2020, to make the
textbooks available, in whole or in part, for sale in an
electronic format. The electronic version of any textbook
must contain the same content as the printed version and may
be copy-protected.
2)Requires the California State University (CSU) and California
Community Colleges (CCC), and encourages UC, to work with
their respective academic senates to encourage faculty to give
consideration to the least costly practices in assigning
textbooks and to work with publishers and college bookstores.
3)Requires college bookstores to work with the academic senates
of each campus to review the process and timelines involved in
ordering and stocking textbooks and to create bundles and
packages of instructional materials that are economically
sound.
SB 1328
Page 6
4)Urges textbook publishers to provide specific information to
faculty and post that information on the company's website,
give preference to supplements rather than producing a new
edition and disclose the length of time the current edition is
intended to be in production.
5)Establishes the College Textbook Transparency Act ÝAB 1548
(Solorio), Chapter 574, Statues of 2007], which requires:
a) Textbook publishers to print on the cover or within each
textbook a summary of the substantive content differences
between the new and prior editions and the copyright date
of the previous edition.
b) Textbook publishers to provide, upon a request by
adopters, a list of the substantial content differences or
changes made between the current edition initially
published on or after January 1, 2010, and the previous
edition of the textbook, including but not necessarily
limited to, new chapters, additional eras of time, new
themes, or new subject matter
c) Each campus bookstore at any public college or
university to post in its store or on its website a
disclosure of its retail pricing policy on new and used
textbooks.
d) Each public college or university to encourage personnel
responsible for selecting course materials (typically
faculty) to place their orders with sufficient lead time to
enable the bookstore to confirm the availability of the
requested materials.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown but potentially significant. The
version of this bill that passed the Senate was keyed non-fiscal
by Legislative Counsel, but recent amendments changed the
designation to fiscal.
COMMENTS : Background . Several reports throughout the last
decade have noted the increasing cost of college textbooks. For
example, the California State Auditor released a report entitled
"Affordability of College Textbooks" (2008) that identified
publishers, campus bookstores, and faculty members as
responsible parties needing to work together to reduce costs and
properly disclose textbook information to students.
SB 1328
Page 7
In response, California and the federal government enacted laws
(see Existing Law above) to provide greater information to
faculty and students about textbook prices and options,
differences in new editions, and to provide supplements instead
of new editions; to encourage the timely adoption of textbooks
by faculty; and to ensure faculty to choose lower cost textbook
options. A report on the implementation of the federal laws is
due in July 2013.
Need for this bill . According to the author, "Given the limited
implementation of these policies this bill takes a proactive
approach at providing textbook price transparency by ensuring
that valuable data, already being provided under requirement of
federal law, to be submitted, collected, and organized in a
useful and uniform format that will ultimately achieve the
intended goal of greater transparency and consequently greater
affordability of postsecondary content."
Textbook adoption and purchasing process . Typically, faculty
choose textbooks in the academic term preceding the one during
which they will use the books to ensure that the campus
bookstore can stock textbooks by the first day of a new semester
and can procure from the used-textbook market as many available
used books as possible. At public and most private independent
institutions, students may purchase their books from the campus
bookstore. To remain self-supporting and in some cases
profitable, campus bookstores apply markups to prices they pay
publishers for textbooks. The resulting amounts are the
bookstores' retail prices that students pay for textbooks.
However, the emergence of Internet book merchants-initially
Amazon, followed by Web-based resellers specifically targeting
college students such as BigWords, CampusBooks, TextBooks, and
others-have increased students' textbook purchasing options.
Numerous websites allow a student to enter a book's ISBN to find
the lowest price for purchase and rental.
What does this bill do ? This bill has 3 components that would
do the following and are discussed in greater detail further in
the analysis:
1) Publisher data formatting: Require publishers to
provide federally-required information in specified formats
that can be used to develop search engines and Web sites.
This data would serve as the basis for developing the
SB 1328
Page 8
search engines encouraged/required in this bill.
2) Faculty textbook adoption search engine: Encourage
public and private higher education institutions to provide
a faculty textbook adoption search engine that allows
faculty or course coordinators to view, compare and
contrast textbooks within a given subject area and to
communicate their adoption choices to the appropriate
procurement staff and colleagues. If the institution
provides this search engine, it must:
a) See out a third-party entity to create and implement the
search engine free of charge.
b) Have a warning system for textbook deadlines and costs
to students for late adoptions and the consequences related
to textbook bundling and customization on student buyback
and resale options.
c) Produce reports to gauge the timeliness and average cost
of textbooks ordered by individual faculty members that,
upon approval of faculty is public available as specified.
d) Ensure that bookstores provide course and adoption
information in an open protocol, as defined, to allow an
outside entity free access to the information.
3) Bookstore textbook comparison search engine: Require
institutions' bookstores, including entities to which this
function is leased, to provide a student textbook price
comparison engine on its Web site that includes the price
difference between a textbook purchased through an online
competitor, including a link through which the student may
purchase a textbook from a competitor.
Publisher data . It is unlikely that publishers from other
states would comply with these provisions; thus, only
California-based publishers would provide this information.
Will this provide enough meaningful information for the search
engines to provide complete pricing options for students and
faculty? Does the cost of formatting this information put
California publishers at a competitive disadvantage? Further,
is this provision necessary? The data is publicly available
under federal law and can be converted into the specified
formats by a third party. In fact, for-profit companies, such
SB 1328
Page 9
as R.R. Bowker, LLC, currently provide this service for a
charge.
Faculty textbook adoption search engine . Reports have indicated
that timely faculty adoption of textbooks and consideration of
price when choosing textbooks are significant factors in
textbook affordability. Is a faculty textbook adoption search
engine necessary to encourage faculty behavior, or can the
institutions implement and enforce policies to this end?
Further, there are faculty adoption search engines that are
currently available to and used by institutions for this
purpose. For example, MBS Textbooks offers this service to
their customers free of charge, allowing faculty to see all
books and the price of each per subject matter and submit an
order to the bookstore. This bill would prohibit institutions
from using these tools unless they include specified features.
Bookstore textbook price search engine . State law allows the
governing board of any CCC district to establish a bookstore on
campus, while state law and or their institutional policies
allow UC and CSU to establish auxiliaries (separate,
self-supporting entities) to provide supportive services, such
as bookstores, for the benefit of the campuses. In some cases,
a campus may choose to contract with a private entity to run its
bookstore. For example at CCC, 46 campuses contract with a
private entities: 28 to Follett Higher Education Group, 17 to
Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc., and one to an out of
state entity.
1)Effects on existing contracts. Agreements with private
entities may vary from campus to campus. How would
institutions that contract for bookstore services comply with
these provisions without violating their existing contracts?
2)Can bookstores do this now? Nothing in state law precludes
bookstores from developing textbook search engines. In fact,
24 California colleges and universities, including UCs, CSUs,
and CCCs contract with VERBA Software, a Web-based search
engine that includes listings from both the campus bookstore
and online retailers for used, new, and digital textbooks and
materials and provides tools to allow campuses to sample the
marketplace to gauge their price competitiveness.
3)Cost and competition. Providing a textbook price search
engine could result in significant costs to the bookstore for
SB 1328
Page 10
both the development of the application and loss in business
from textbook sales. Does this provision put
bricks-and-mortar bookstores at a competitive disadvantage to
online competitors? Since public institutions will be bearing
the cost to implement and maintain the search engines, does
this bill, in effect, use public resources to subsidize
private enterprise? Why aren't existing textbook search
engines, such as Amazon, VERBA, etc.?
4)Student protections. There are no provisions explicitly
ensuring the privacy of students who order through these
search engines. Could a third party mine the data for student
names and purchasing history in order to market its products?
Private institutions . It is unclear to what extent these
provision will affect private for-profit institutions, since
these institutions vary significantly. The author notes that it
is not his intent to cover institutions whose faculty do not
adopt individual textbooks.
Federal report . The federal Higher Education Opportunity Act
requires the Comptroller General of the United States to report,
by July 1, 2013, on the implementation of the requirements
imposed upon institutions of higher education, college
bookstores and publishers, and particularly examine: 1) the
availability of college textbook information on course
schedules; 2) the provision of pricing information to faculty by
publishers; and 3) the use of bundled and unbundled material.
Should we consider the findings of this report before
implementing new policy in this area?
Related legislation . SB 1053 (Steinberg), to be heard by this
Committee on July 3, would establishe the California Digital
Open Source Library for the purpose of housing open source
materials. SB 1539 (Corbett), which is pending on the Assembly
Floor, would require the publisher of a textbook, or an agent or
employee of the publisher, to provide prescribed data about the
textbook to prospective purchasers. AB 2471 (Lara), which was
held on the Assembly Appropriations Committee suspense file,
would require public postsecondary institutions and the
governing body of each private postsecondary educational
institution that offers a baccalaureate degree to adopt policies
to prohibit the assignment of an e-textbook unless that
e-textbook complies with various provisions.
SB 1328
Page 11
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file.
Opposition
Association of American Publishers, Inc.
California Association of College Stores
California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office
California State University
Kern Community College District
Los Rios Community College District
Mt. San Jacinto Community College District
Peralta Community College District
San Diego Community College District
University of Southern California
Analysis Prepared by : Sandra Fried / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960