Statistics:

• According to the College Board, students pay, on average, more than $1,200 per year for textbooks. 

• Textbook prices have risen almost 1000% in recent years — more than three times the rate of inflation. 

• These prices create a financial burden for college students, forcing students to make tradeoffs from skipping meals and taking on a part-time job to taking fewer classes, opting not to take a specific course or even changing their major. 

• According to INSIDEHIGHERED, a survey by e-textbook provider VitalSource found that 50 percent of students who delayed buying textbooks because of high prices saw their grades suffer as a result.  

• CBS News 1/26/18  reported that 65 percent of students skip buying required texts at some point in their college career because of a lack of affordability.

• Roughly 60 percent of students used an access code (Average $100) during the 2016-17 academic year, according to the National Association of College Stores (NACS), most of them underclassmen at four-year institutions or community-college students taking introductory classes.

• STEM courses are 85% costlier than humanities and arts. GW Hatchet (George Washington University community in downtown Washington, D.C)

• "Seventeen percent of respondents said they changed their major because of high textbook prices" Inside Higher Ed. Paying for books today may mean choosing between Intro to Microbiology and a flight home for Thanksgiving. By Emma Whitford July 26, 2018.

Examples of other Liberal Arts college initiatives: (not an exhaustive list)

1. Williams is “the only college in the country that guarantees free textbooks and course materials to all students receiving financial aid.”

2. Dartmouth, Lafayette, Wheaton offer faculty grants to use, adapt, or create OER.

3. Textbook assistance programs: Colby, Oberlin, Swarthmore, Smith College, Wellesley

4. Textbook exchange program (often run by students):  Middlebury, Skidmore, Wellesley

5. Library reserve programs. Bates, Vassar, and others. 

6. Many have LibGuide Resource guides on OER and seek to inform their campuses. (SPARC members in small colleges and their activities.)

General Information:

Rill, Josef. The Textbook Decision: Purchasing Options Affecting Students in the Classroom.  University of South Florida:  March, 2019. 

Dissertation argues that “each textbook/course material can have an effect on a student’s academic success and course satisfaction.” https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9107&context=etd

Senack, Ethan. Fixing the broken textbook market:  How students respond to high textbook costs and demand alternatives.  The Student PIRGS: January, 2014. https://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/NATIONAL%20Fixing%20Broken%20Textbooks%20Report1.pdf

Important Initiatives:

• Development of Open Educational Resources (OER): OER are materials and resources that are publicly accessible, meaning that they are openly available for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. 

• Created largely by organizations and Universities, there are a growing number of sources for free online textbooks. Many colleges, systems, states and multi-state regional compacts have launched OER programs in recent years.

Window of opportunity for OER (August 13, 2020) 

Open Education Initiative grants for faculty are available at Dartmouth, Lafayette, Wheaton.

• Information sharing: SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) 240+ institutional members in US and Canada work to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery, and increase the return on our investment in research and education. 

• Student advocacy: The Student PIRGs (Public Interest Research Group)  launched the Open Textbook Alliance, which works with student governments nationwide to pass policies supporting the adoption of free open textbooks. https://studentpirgs.org/cool_timeline/the-student-pirgs-launched-the-open-textbook-alliance-which-works-with-student-governments-nationwide-to-pass-policies-supporting-the-adoption-of-free-open-textbooks-it-seeks-to-replicate-successful/