From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: College Textbook Information Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Melissa Emrey-Arras, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security Related GAO Work: GAO-13-368: College Textbooks: Students Have Greater Access to Textbook Information Released: June 2013 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's June 2013. Textbooks are an important factor in the rising costs of college education. Publishers and schools are responsible for giving students access to textbook cost information. A team led by Melissa Emrey-Arras, a director in GAO's Education, Workforce, and Income Security team, recently examined the availability of textbook cost information. GAO's Sarah Kaczmarek sat down with Melissa to learn more. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] What prompted GAO to look into access to textbook information? [ Melissa Emrey-Arras: ] Well as you may know many students and their families are very concerned about the cost of college these days, and quite frankly, textbooks can be expensive. In fact, in 2005 we reported that the prices of textbooks had increased dramatically over time. So given that, Congress wanted to make sure that students had the information they needed to make good decisions about textbooks, and actually made a change to the law to require textbook publishers and schools to provide pricing information to students about textbooks. And as part of that law, asked GAO to see how that implementation was going. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] So then what's the benefit to students of having this information? [ Melissa Emrey-Arras: ] The bottom line is that they can comparison shop. So before, they might've received the information that they had a book that they had to purchase, but they didn't necessarily know the price of it. They didn't know, you know, the copyright information, et cetera. Now they have all of the details they need to really make informed decisions to purchase that book. So, for example, they could still purchase it from their campus bookstore, or they could take that information that they have and go online to see if, perhaps, there's a cheaper version there, or they could even use that information to see if their local library has the book, or maybe even if a friend has it. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] And what information are publishers providing to schools now? [ Melissa Emrey-Arras: ] Publishers are providing information on the price of textbooks, as well as other options like e-books to help faculty make good decisions about the products that they offer to their students. They've also started making materials that were previously bundled, so that before, for example, you might have a lab book and a textbook which had to come together. Now they're allowing people to just purchase one of those, which gives faculty more options in terms of what to provide to their students. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] And what are schools doing with this information, then, to make it available to students? [ Melissa Emrey-Arras: ] They're putting it on their website. So this allows students to see the material that's required and find out whether, you know, they want to purchase it from their bookstore or whether they want to look for it elsewhere. And in fact, we looked at a nationally representative sample of school websites in the fall of 2012 and found that most were providing the required information. So they're providing, for example, the retail price of the book, the unique book number, copyright dates, et cetera, which is really helping students get what they need to make good decisions about textbooks. [ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Finally, for students and also parents concerned about college affordability, what's the bottom line here? [ Melissa Emrey-Arras: ] I think the bottom line is that textbooks are still expensive. As we found in 2005, you know textbooks were expensive then, and they're still expensive now. We looked at information from 2002 to 2012 and found that the price of new textbooks was still increasing. And it was increasing more than the cost of other goods. So textbooks still are a challenge for a lot of folks in terms of college affordability. The good news, however, is that because of the requirements that Congress put in place, students now have more information to help control and manage those costs. So while they can't directly, you know, choose which textbooks will be selected for their biology class or their psychology class, they can choose, you know, where they wanna buy that textbook. Whether that's online or whether it's from their campus bookstore or perhaps whether, you know, it's just borrowing it from the local library or a friend. So from that perspective, they do have a lot more control over managing their costs than they used to. And that's a good thing for students and families. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit gao.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the Congressional Watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.