With the fall semester beginning, it’s now every student’s priority to seek relief from inflated textbook prices.

This summer, the Textbook Adoption Policy was passed and will hopefully begin as soon as this school year. Student Senate President, Tina Marshalek, explains how the Textbook Adoption Policy could benefit our college and, most importantly, our students. Marshalek begins by illuminating how “consistency and uniformity within the bookstore” is crucial for having a full textbook rental program. Although it is not practical to be able to adopt all textbooks, it is the council’s goal to make the majority of them rentals.

Madison College President, Jack Daniels III, has signed the Textbook Adoption Policy and has approved a number of textbooks per sections offered. Some textbooks, however, are required to be updated every year, meaning those textbooks would not qualify for the rental program. This is because the contract states that textbook must be in use for a minimum of three years, so books that have to be revised each year would not count towards the policy.

Kevin Foley, from the Student Affairs Co-Chairs, said, “Teachers will be forming teams to look at the cost of their textbooks and thinking about how they could be able to reduce the prices. If more and more instructors are using the same textbooks across sections of the same course, it will give the Madison College bookstore better negotiating power.”

Although they cannot promise the Textbook Adoption Policy to work exactly as planned, Madison College does have a model from UW Whitewater and UW Eau Claire on how we can make it work as efficiently as possible.

Marshalek says the Student Senate has met with the Presidential Cabinet about this issue, and they have expressed support. Although it would be a large financial investment, she believes it is “nothing this college can’t handle.”

Over time, the Textbook Adoption Policy will dramatically decrease students’ textbook costs and eventually direct them to our bookstore instead of other popular textbook sources, such as Amazon. The Madison College bookstore is currently breaking even, but over the years, has significantly decreased in profit.

Madison College Bookstore manager, Scott Heiman, commented on this issue. “I believe this is the foundation for many opportunities that will directly reduce textbook prices for our students in the future. I doubt that this will bring in more customers initially. However, once the policy is fully implemented and we as a college begin to take advantage of the cost saving opportunities, I do believe more students will want to obtain their books and course materials from the bookstore.”

The 2016-17 Student Senate Hallway Survey data determined that 60 percent of students agreed to consider taking another class per semester if the textbook expenses were lower. This was something that greatly stood out to Marshalek, and is why she is so passionate about this recently passed policy.

“If we can dramatically decrease the cost of textbooks to students, we might see an increase in enrollment, and that is the most important thing right now,” Marshalek said.

Textbook Adoption Overview

Madison College recognizes that the high and escalating cost of textbooks and course material creates a significant barrier to student learning, retention, and success. The Textbook Adoption Policy was created to provide a college-wide framework for ensuring timely, cost-effective and high quality textbook and course material adoption.

To standardize the textbook adoption procedure, administration and faculty adhere to the following policy guidelines that have been developed to eliminate the high cost of textbooks:

1. Each program/department adopt their textbooks for at least three academic years.
2. In support of collaboration and inclusion, departments/programs identify faculty teams that are responsible for overseeing the timely and complete submission of all textbook adoptions, including no-text required, to the bookstore.
3. Faculty teams submit textbook and material adoptions prior to the start of the student registration period for the following term.
4. To maximize the cost of savings resulting from uniformity, faculty assigned to classes after the adoption deadline use the texts already assigned to their courses by the department/program faculty teams for the adoption cycle.
5. Only in exceptional circumstances may faculty request to use a textbook outside of the established approval process.
6. The policy ensures compliance with the Madison College Employee Code of Ethics-Conflict of Interest Statement.