I suppose Congress deserves most of the terrible things we say about them but they do, on occasion, do something useful. Case in point: H.R. 4137 Higher Education Opportunity Act which was signed into law by President Bush in August 2008. This is the most recent reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965 which, among other things, is the law that funds federal financial aid programs.

This time around (this is the 8th reauthorization) Congress has included text books in their review. There are two interesting sections.

Section 112 requires schools to provide timely information about required books so that students might be better consumers and so that they might acquire their books as quickly as possible. For example, it requires schools to list the ISBN and retail price of the required and recommended books in their online schedules - so students will know how much they should expect to spend on books before they enroll.

Section 803 provides funding to establish pilot programs "to make it possible for bookstores to give students the option of saving money by renting course materials." This doesn't mean that book rentals are around the corner for every school but it's interesting (to me at least) that this idea was deemed important enough to include in reauthorization. The next reauthorization is due at the end of 2013 so if these pilot programs go well, maybe this idea will be expanded next time.

Enough of the boring stuff and on to the useful part of this post. It is still not completely clear how UIS will implement the requirements in Section 112 but there is an early indicator on our website right now. Earlier this semester, I wrote a post about a new tool available on the registration website called the UIS Semester Planner. If you go to the registration website now and look under the Course Schedules link, you'll see that this tool has been renamed the UIS Semester Planner and Textbook Information! If you want to know what books are required for your spring classes, you can find the details now. (You are seeing what the bookstore has on file so if you don't see information it is because they don't have the information.)