CAMPUS TASK FORCE PROPOSES RETENTION OF TEXTBOOK RENTALS

A Faculty Senate task force at Southeast Missouri State University has recommended the university retain its textbook rental system, but with some policy changes.

The recommendation was nearly unanimous, with only one dissenting vote on the 12-member task force.

The lone dissent came from the chairman of the Textbook Services Task Force, faculty senator Albert Hayward.

Hayward was named as task force chairman after faculty senator Max Drake resigned from Faculty Senate at the start of the fall semester.

In a minority report, Hayward recommends the university scrap the rental system and require students to purchase textbooks as many other universities do.

Both reports were distributed to members of the Faculty Senate last week.

The Faculty Senate is expected to discuss the task force's majority and minority reports at its first meeting of the spring semester, Jan. 22.

Mike Farrar, a student on the task force, said Friday that the final decision regarding any changes in the textbook system rests with the university's Board of Regents.

The task force, established in the fall of 1990, comprised students, university staff members and faculty.

In the majority report, the task force said that the rental system is a drawing card in recruiting students, because it's less costly for students than buying their textbooks.

But the task force recommends that policies be changed to allow university departments more flexibility in the selection of textbooks.

"Given the nature and mission of the university, a major objective is to keep a quality education within the means of as many potential, qualified students as possible," the task force said in its majority report.

"To accomplish this, some trade-off between absolute faculty freedom in the adoption of texts, and the economic costs to students must be made," the report says.

Under current guidelines, faculty adopt a text for two years, are limited to one book per course and each instructor of a particular course uses the same text.

The report recommends keeping the guidelines but allowing for exceptions that would be authorized at the department level.

"By passing authority to the department level, faculty will be able to more readily change books, use different books in different sections, and have multiple book adoptions for a single course, if circumstances justify such action," the report says.

Students currently can purchase textbooks if they desire at 10 percent over cost plus tax for new books. For each semester the book has been in use, the cost is lowered by 10 percent.

"Most book stores charge a standard 20 percent to 25 percent markup on cost, so the above scheme represents a saving to students over recommended retail price," the report points out.

Some faculty members have argued that the rental system discourages students from developing a personal library.

But Farrar said many students already buy some of their textbooks. "I have close to 100 old textbooks of my own so basically I am building my own personal library," he said. "There are a lot of students that do that."

The task force favors keeping the 10 percent over cost policy as long as economically feasible.

But the report suggests allowing students to apply a portion of the textbook rental fee toward the purchase of any of the books they have rented.

Such a move, the task force said, would make purchase of books even more economical.

The textbook fee was recently raised from $7 to $9 per course. All direct costs were already covered by the $7 fee. The increase will offset a major portion of the indirect costs such as utilities and computer support, the task force said.

University recruiters said the rental system was "one of the most useful tools for recruiting prospective students," the report notes.

The task force said in the majority report that students surveyed expressed support for the textbook rental system. That view was also supported by a Student Government petition containing more than 2,100 signatures.

The report, citing the results of a survey, concludes that a slight majority of the faculty favor the textbook rental system.

It also notes that a number of universities nationwide offer a rental system, including Central Missouri State, Northwest Missouri State, and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.

The task force concludes the second-best alternative is to retain the rental system with no changes in policy. The third-ranked alternative is to adopt a mandatory purchase system, while the least liked alternative calls for establishing a combined system, where students would be able to rent some of their textbooks, but would have to purchase others.

The report says that a mandatory purchase system would require a 15,000 to 20,000-square-foot facility costing an estimated $1 million. Current space occupied by Textbook Services and the university bookstore combined is about 12,000 square feet.

"Thus, from a commercial perspective, a textbook purchase system is infeasible, given constraints of space and availability of funding for new construction," the task force said.