CUE Debates Textbook Program

The Committee on Undergraduate Education last night debated a proposal to implement a college-wide program to reduce the cost of textbooks to students.

According to the proposal submitted by the Undergraduate Council (UC), the system could potentially save students $1.3 million annually. The Harvard Coop and Harvard faculty and students would all have access to this database, which would be called the Harvard College Book Information System.

Alyssa Q. Colbert ’10, the committee’s vice-chair, said that the idea behind the new system is to create an online system to provide students with free and easy access to book information, particularly ISBN numbers.

“We’re trying to change the relationship between the Coop, faculty and students,” Colbert said. “We think that students should have access to [ISBN] numbers in the same way that the Coop has access to them.”

UC president Ryan A. Petersen ’08 said that the HOLLIS catalog, the extensive database of the Harvard University Libraries, does not currently give students access to the ISBN numbers they need.

“Using the HOLLIS search method doesn’t get us the exact same [editions],” Petersen said. “Most students want the same edition that the professor and students around them are using.”

While the faculty members on the committee generally acknowledged that the current system of distributing book information needs improvement, they brought up several difficulties of implementing the UC’s proposed system.

Assistant Dean of the College and chemistry lecturer Logan S. McCarty voiced a widely held concern that an online information system could not perform one of the Coop’s most vital functions: reminding professors to get their book orders in on time.

“A service the Coop does is hounding us,” McCarty said. “That’s a key element that’s missing here...We have to create something where someone has an incentive to get the faculty to get their book orders in.”

The chair of the statistics department, Xiao-Li Meng, proposed an alternative solution to that problem.

Meng suggested that every department appoint a staff person to remind professors to send their book titles to the Coop and collect information on those books. Such a procedure already exists in the statistics department, Meng said.

“I view this problem as more of a lack of teaching infrastructure,” he said.

Dean of the Extension School Michael Shinagel, who is also vice-chair of the Coop’s board of directors, brought up concerns about the potential costs of such a program.

“Chaos and dark night would reign at Harvard and MIT,” Shinagel said. “It would cost a significant amount of money to create institutions to do what Coop is doing now. They’ve been doing it for 125 years.”

Assistant Dean of the College Stephanie H. Kenen said that differences among departments could complicate even estimating the costs of such a large-scale program.

“One of the complicating factors is disciplinary differences and department differences in terms of types of book they order and the staff they have,” Kenen said. “That adds to the complexity

complexity of figuring out what it might cost to do this.

Shinagel also said that the Coop is actually playing a service role when they sell textbooks to students, not “gouging” them as some may believe.

“The Coop’s least profitable operation is textbooks,” Shinagel said. “It’s very labor-intensive to shelve and reshelve. If anything, the Coop is lucky to break even.”

Shinagel added that the Coop is working to alleviate rising textbook costs.

“One of the great initiatives is to have more buybacks of textbooks,” he said. “This is where the Coop is trying to do much more. We need the cooperation of the faculty for this to happen.”

Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs Georgene B. Herschbach, who has spoken with MIT administrators, said that institution, for which the Coop also provides textbooks, is facing similar issues.

“MIT is in about the same position that we are in wanting to make the collection of textbook information easier and more efficient,” Herschbach said.

McCarty and Herschbach said that they would work to come up with a model for the proposed online book information system.

“We do want to follow up on this,” McCarty said. “We’ll talk to MIT to see what they’re discussing.”

-Staff writer Angela A. Sun can be reached at asun@fas.harvard.edu.