The Baruch College Faculty Handbook

Last updated on 5/21/2009

From Bill Ferns, secretary of the Baruch College Faculty Senate (9/25/08)

During this past summer, the New York State Legislature passed the “Textbook Access Act of 2008.” Some of the salient point of this law are:

• It mandates that textbook publishers provide better pricing transparency to adoptes (i.e., faculty) of textbooks;
• It requires that textbooks be available sold as ordered
  by faculty (i.e., textbooks cannot be bundled with items not included in the adoption), unless the unbundled items are also available);
• It requires institutes of higher learning to implement
  policies to get faculty to order their books earlier;
• It defines the financial and material benefits faculty can and can not receive for adopting a text.

This law will go into effect on July 1, 2009. We have established links to several files pertaining to this law:

• The text of the law;
• The NYS Assembly’s synopsis of the law;
• A memo (September 2008) from Frederick Schaffer, CUNY’s Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs, with his analysis of the law and its requirements.
• Frederick Schaffer’s “legislation update” of May 2009.

Thanks for your time.

Yours,

Bill Ferns

Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems