------Original Message ------
Subject: Attn - Faculty Assistance with HEOA Disclosure Requirements Needed
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:18:36 -0400
From: Office of the Registrar <
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TO: Faculty
FROM: John Q. Pierce, University Registrar and Assistant Provost
DATE: March 22, 2010
RE: IMPORTANT—Faculty Assistance Needed to Comply with Textbook Disclosure Requirements of the
Higher Education Opportunity Act
The Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) of 2008 imposes a new textbook disclosure requirement beginning with the Fall 2010 semester. A summary of the law and the University’s plan to comply with it is provided below. In short, we are required to list on our internet course schedule the required and recommended texts selected by faculty for all courses, and retail prices for them so that students can see the materials they will need and shop around for the best prices. *In order to comply with this law, the University needs you to identify the texts you will use for your courses early, to the extent that is possible, so the information will be available to students on the internet course schedule during pre-registration beginning April 7. *You shortly will receive a related communication from the Bookstore about designating materials for your courses in the coming days. Please take this communication seriously and respond to it in a timely way. Thank you for your cooperation in our effort to meet this obligation and help our students save on course materials.
· *The Mechanism for Listing Texts: *After considering various options to comply with this law and to minimize the extra effort required of faculty members, we have decided to work with the Follett Higher Education Group (the company that manages the Georgetown University Bookstore) to create a simple mechanism to show the ISBN (or, if ISBN is not available, author, title, publisher and copyright date) and price for the required and recommended books on the internet course schedule for individual courses. *Every faculty member will have to record his/her required and recommended materials with the Georgetown University Bookstore so that they are included through this mechanism. *This will enable students to click on a link for each course on the internet course listing (from the site) and will land on a page that will show the required and recommended text information. . At that point, students will have many options. They can either click on another link to purchase the course materials from the Georgetown University Bookstore online, go to the Bookstore, or use the information to compare retail prices or purchase from other vendors (e.g., Amazon, Barnes & Noble, used book vendors, etc.) or from other students who may want to sell those books. We will monitor the implementation of this new procedure and, with your input, periodically reevaluate whether this or another mechanism for compiling text information and complying with the law is best.
· *If Texts Cannot Yet be Finalized: * Recognizing that it may not always be possible for faculty to determine the texts they will use far in advance of a course, the law allows us to designate materials as “To Be Determined” on the course schedule, and this will be the default setting for each course until the materials are identified. Please note: this “TBD” default feature should not be viewed as final. Congress is requiring the GAO to review universities’ compliance with this law and institutions, including Georgetown, could be audited. The Provost will be working with the deans to make sure that, in particular, our largest courses, and those that make regular choices of what might be called standard textbooks (such as our introductory courses in several disciplines), post the required information in time for preregistration. To reiterate, for all courses, faculty should provide specific information about texts to the bookstore as early as they can, and should inform the bookstore as they decide on course texts, even if they have not chosen all texts and other materials for a course. **
· *The Ultimate Goal--Helping Students Save Money: *Faculty members’ efforts to identify texts (particularly expensive ones) early will assist the University in complying with the HEOA textbook information provision and will give students an opportunity to obtain course materials at the best price from whatever source they might choose. *In addition to helping students find the best retail price for new books, early identification helps create a market for used books and may enable book rental and buy-back programs*.
· *The Law: *The Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA), enacted by Congress in 2008, requires (among many other things) that all colleges and universities provide students with information about required and recommended texts (by ISBN, or, if ISBN is not available, by author, title, publisher and copyright date) for each course and the retail prices for the selected texts. The law requires that this information be posted on the University’s internet course schedule. The primary goal of this “textbook information” provision is to get higher education institutions and their faculty and bookstores to work together with publishers to identify ways to decrease the cost of course materials to students while supporting the academic freedom of faculty members to select high quality course materials.
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This message was posted by Sonia Jacobson on behalf of the University Registrar as authorized by the Provost.