Law Requires Harvard to Post Book Prices

A new federal law requires Harvard and other publicly funded universities to post the prices and ISBNs of course books online.

At Harvard, this information is now available on the Harvard Coop’s website, which Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Jeff Neal said puts the University in compliance with the new law.

The law, which was passed by Congress 2008 before taking effect this year, is intended to lessen the financial burden of university students buying course books.

“[T]hey’re trying to make the retail market more competitive and make it easier for students to find the cheapest price of a particular book,” said Ian Ayres, professor at Yale Law School, who recently wrote a New York Times blog post about the new law.

The law, which is part of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, states that the information must be posted “on the institution’s Internet course schedule and in a manner of the institution’s choosing.”

At community colleges, textbooks can account for up to 40 percent of the cost of attending college, according to Ayres.

“This isn’t such a problem at Harvard, where textbooks cost probably less than 5 percent of the cost of getting a Harvard education,” he added.

Harvard professors interviewed by The Crimson about the new requirements were critical of the law, calling it an example of federal overreach.

“I have no objection to posting the price of course materials. But as matter of personal political philosophy, I am skeptical about the federal government micromanaging such decisions,” N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economics  professor and the author of a popular introductory textbook, wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson.

Another Harvard professor had a tongue-in-cheek response to the law.

“We wait breathlessly for the federal government to prescribe mandatory potty-breaks every 15 minutes during classes. Lobbyists from Procter and Gamble are no doubt already working on the legislation,” History Professor James Hankins wrote in an e-mail.

Hankins’ course History 1300 “Western Intellectual History: Greco Roman-Antiquity” requires students to purchase 11 textbooks.

Manuel J. Antunes ’11, a history concentrator, said he supports the law’s focus on textbook costs.

“I think posting them [textbook prices] online will definitely help to figure out where to get better prices for books,” he said. “I now do everything on Amazon because it’s just ridiculous [at the Coop].”

But even Ayres, who has made proposals aimed at lowering the price of textbooks, had reservations about the law.

“Overall, I admire the legislative attempt, but I’m skeptical that it will have much of an impact,” he said. “The law may produce an interesting competitive effect where teachers actually compete for students by assigning lower price textbooks.”

Besides requiring colleges to publicly list the price of textbooks, the law also mandates that publishers detail changes between successive revisions to textbooks.

—Staff writer Eric P. Newcomer can be reached at newcomer@fas.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: September 8, 2010

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this Sept. 8 news article was originally titled "Law Requires Coop to Post Prices Online." In fact, the new law requires Harvard University, not the Coop, to post the prices and ISBNs of course books online.