$754 at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Suffolk County, $450 at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and $318 at SUNY New Paltz in Ulster County.
Those are some of the textbook totals spent by students at those schools this semester. Members of the Public Interest Research Group took photos of the students and how much they spent and brought the information to lawmakers this week. The high cost of textbooks is something the Senate Higher Education and Consumer Protection committees are investigating. Senators said students, consumer advocacy groups and others have expressed concern about the rising cost of textbooks and course materials. One study found that prices increased 186 percent from 1986 to 2004—an annual average of 6 percent, or more than twice the inflation rate.
“I’m into the affordability, both tuition and textbooks, and we’ve got to get to producing for students their textbooks in the most economical way,” said Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Kenneth LaValle, R-Suffolk County.
LaValle and Fuschillo are introducing legislation that would establish guidelines and provisions to help curb increasing prices, such as that textbooks would be sold in the same manner as ordered by a faculty member and not bundled with supplemental materials.
If books are sold in bundles with other materials—such as a workbook and a digital component—they should automatically be available “a la carte” too, said Fran Clark of NYPIRG.
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