The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund and Student PIRGs recently published a report describing the continued effects of high textbook prices on students and higher education, indicating that students may be interested in alternatives to the traditional textbook.

During the fall of 2013, Student PIRGs surveyed 2,039 students from 150 universities. The results from the survey showed that the high cost of textbooks is deterring students from purchasing their assigned materials, despite a potential negative impact on their grades. 65% of the students reported that they did not purchase a textbook because of the cost. Out of those students, 94% were concerned about the impact on their grades.

The survey showed that the high cost of textbooks has a ripple effect on students’ other academic decisions. Almost half of the students reported that the cost of textbooks impacted the number and types of classes they enrolled in each semester, which may limit the scope of their academic progress and increase the overall length of their education.

Traditional textbook alternatives, such as open access, were popular among students. 82% of the students perceived that a free online textbook (with an optional hard copy available for purchase) would have significantly improved their performance in the course.

The study concluded that the high costs of textbooks will continue to be a problem for students if textbook alternatives are not offered alongside traditional options. Open access textbooks must be adopted on a national scale if the prices of traditional textbooks remain the same or continue to increase.

If you would like to read the full report, visit:
http://www.uspirg.org/reports/usp/fixing-broken-textbook-market

According to the American Enterprise Institute, textbook costs have increased by 812 percent since 1978. At the University of Utah, the average cost of textbooks and supplies for students is about $1,000 a year, on top of $7,000 of in-state tuition fees.

Understanding the financial barrier of a higher education, the new University of Utah Academic Senate committee has made it their goal to help students by exploring options to make textbooks cheaper. The option they currently chose to pursue was to encourage the adoption of open-access textbooks for lower level courses. The committee is aiming to save each student about $500 a year on their textbooks.

Ethan Senack, a higher education advocate with the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), has championed open-access textbooks as an ideal solution for introducing more competition into the textbook market to help drive prices down. In the current textbook market, the buyers (students) do not make the purchasing decisions. They buy the textbooks their professors require them to obtain, which is usually  from a selection of similarly priced $200 textbooks, and this removes the urgency for publishers to lower prices. The introduction of open-access textbooks have the potential to make the publishers offer more competitive pricing if they want their textbooks to continue being adopted in courses across the country.

The Academic Senate committee has stated they will look into other options to save students money, such as a textbook exchange, and continue to offer an online textbook price comparison tool and semester-long textbook rentals at half the price of a new volume at the university bookstore.

The committee is scheduled to report its findings in April 2014.

If you would like to read the full article, visit:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57223944-78/textbooks-university-utah-books.html.csp

As students are finalizing their course lists and beginning to shop around for their textbooks, the USF Oracle has published an article about the high cost of textbooks and the steps the University of South Florida has taken to help students overcome this issue.

The article shares the stories of several USF students who have been affected by expensive textbooks. Some of the students stated that their textbooks purchases have caused them to incur debt, while others claimed they will have to cut spending in other areas of their life to accommodate the costs.

In addition, the article includes an interview with Monica Metz-Wiseman, head of the Textbook Affordability Project (TAP), with a comprehensive background of TAP and other initiatives that USF has approved to help students with their textbooks costs.

An online version of the article can be found here:
http://www.usforacle.com/breaking-the-bank-for-books-1.2851263#.UtAThfvaYsc

The non-profit organization OpenStax College recently released its sixth open access digital textbook: Introductory Statistics.

OpenStax College publishes free, open access and peer-reviewed textbooks for undergraduate college courses. Their goal is to improve student access to quality learning materials and to provide access to everyone desiring a higher education.

So far, OpenStax has released 5 other textbooks, such as College Physics, Introduction to Sociology, Biology, Concepts of Biology and Anatomy and Physiology. They are continuing their work by planning seven additional titles to expand their coverage of economics, science, and social sciences.

According to OpenStax College, in less than two years, their open access textbooks have saved over 52,000 students about $5 million in total costs. More than 360 community colleges, four-year colleges, and research universities have adopted these textbooks.

Introductory Statistics is available now as a free download via openstaxcollege.org.

If you would like to read the full article, visit:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/12/16/openstax-releases-6th-free-textbook.aspx

Recently, the City Colleges of Chicago Board of Trustees approved a contract with Akademos that will soon give students access to a range of affordable textbook options. The new contract is expected to save students a total of up to $4 million annually compared to the previous textbook vendor arrangements.

The new contract with Akademos provides students with a 24/7 online bookstore and marketplace. Students will be able to purchase textbooks in their preferred format – digital, new, used, or rental – and apply for financial aid and vouchers to complete the purchase electronically.

The textbooks will be significantly discounted. More than 50,000 etextbooks will be offered at a 30-60% discount off of the publisher’s physical textbook list price. Textbook rentals will cost an average of 50% less and used textbooks will be offered at 60-75% off the publisher’s list price. In addition, students will be able to sell their textbooks through the Akademos marketplace to recoup some of their cost.

Under the new contract, Akademos will provide a $5,000 annual textbook scholarship to the City Colleges of Chicago Foundation, hire paid student interns, create kiosk stations at each college to assist students with textbook purchases, and more. The college bookstores will continue to sell school supplies and other retail items, but they will no longer sell textbooks.

The City Colleges of Chicago faculty members will be able to search for the textbooks they wish to use in their classes through Akademos’ textbook adoption tool.

The new system will launch on April 4, 2014, the first day of registration for the summer term.

If you would like to read the full article, visit:
http://www.ccc.edu/news/Pages/CCC-Significantly-Expands-Affordable-Textbook-Options,-Saving-Students-Up-to-$4-Million-Annually.aspx

In the 2013 fall semester, the University of South Florida entered into its third phase of the Internet 2/EDUCAUSE Etextbook Pilot. USF conducted its first and second phases of the etextbook pilot over the 2012 fall and 2013 spring semesters with twenty six other universities. The student and faculty data collected from the first two phases of the pilot have been analyzed and the results will be released soon.

The goal of the pilot is to test a new etextbook model and provide students with substantial financial savings and enhanced access to digital educational materials. The pilot builds on a successful etextbook model used at Indiana University in 2009 by Bradley C. Wheeler, the university’s vice president for information technology. Wheeler’s model promoted the idea that if a university bought etextbooks in bulk and charged a mandatory course-materials fee to cover the costs, the university could negotiate a much better price per book for their students.

The pilot is an initial proof-of-concept activity under a partnership between Internet2 and EDUCAUSE and it may expand over time to include additional components, such as additional publishers or e-readers. Courseload has been provided as the pilot’s current e-reader.

Courseload, an e-reader and learning collaboration tool, is embedded in the student’s course on Blackboard or Canvas. It allows students to take full advantage of their electronic textbooks by encouraging them to print what they need, highlight passages in the text, and create annotations. The e-reader is available both online and offline, so that students and faculty can access their e textbooks even when their devices are disconnected from the Internet. In addition, students can either self-print pages of their e-textbook or purchase a print version of the textbook for about $30.

At the end of the pilot, students and faculty will be asked to provide feedback about their experience with the e-textbooks and the Courseload platform to assist in determining the effectiveness of the pilot.

Senators Dick Durbin and Al Franken recently introduced a new bill — the Affordable College Textbook Act — to assist students with textbook costs. The purpose of the bill is to overcome the rising cost of textbooks by providing states with an incentive to experiment with open educational resources. If the bill is passed, it would direct the Secretary of Education to fund the creation of college textbooks and materials that would be made available for free under open licenses. These licenses would allow students and instructors to access, reproduce, adapt, and distribute the newly created textbooks and materials for any purpose, with the sole requirement that authors of the work are acknowledged.

The bill is currently being reviewed by a congressional committee.

If you would like to visit the original article, visit:
http://us.creativecommons.org/archives/802

The State University of New York (SUNY) recently announced the release of its first two open access textbooks under its Open SUNY Textbooks initiative: Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity by Theodore Steinberg and Native Peoples of North America by Professor Susan Stebbins, PhD. The textbooks were released as part of the 6^th annual Open Access Week, an international event to promote open access in scholarship, research, teaching, and learning.

The Open SUNY Textbooks initiative was established by the State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. The initiative was designed to encourage faculty to publish high-quality and affordable etextbooks in partnership with their campus library, including access to peer reviewers, student assessors, instructional designers, and consultation from the publisher, SUNY Press.

In the 2012, the first Open SUNY Textbook pilot was launched at participating libraries, including SUNY Geneseo, College at Brockport, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY Fredonia, Upstate Medical University, and University at Buffalo, with support from other SUNY libraries and SUNY Press.

The first pilot will be concluding with 15 published titles by the end of 2013, including subjects such as Anthropology, Business, Computer Science, Education, English, Geological Sciences, Mathematics, Music Education, and Physics. A second pilot will follow and increase the amount of textbooks and participating libraries.

Open SUNY Textbooks will be made available for free download at www.opensuny.org.

If you would like to read more, visit:
http://www.suny.edu/sunynews/News.cfm?filname=2013-10-23-OpenSUNYTextbooks.htm

Over the last several years, the cost of college textbooks has steadily increased, leading some experts to believe the textbook market bubble is the next to burst.

According to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), textbook prices have risen by more than 142%, while general consumer prices have only increased by 44% from January 1998 to July 2013. After adjusting for inflation, the AEI reports that textbook prices have increased 100% and recreational books have decreased by more than 40%. This trend is being driven by increasing overall college costs, says AEI.

“We are past peak book prices,” says Richard Baraniuk, Rice University professor and director of OpenStax College (a nonprofit organization that develops open access textbooks), “and if you look at recent surveys, nearly seven in 10 students are no longer purchasing college textbooks, and that means the marketplace is starting to turn away from that price model.”

The textbook bubble has created movements for more open access content; students are adapting to newer technologies that may pull them away from the publisher’s traditional textbook model. Dr. Baranuik states that new models will begin emerging based on how students use their textbooks and publishers will have to adjust to stay competitive.

If you would like to read the full article, visit:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/10/10/college-textbooks-next-bubble-to-burst/

Thuze, an etextbook publisher launched by Bridgepoint Education, Inc. in 2012, has released a press release on their website regarding the fall 2013 semester. They claim to offer students their digitally flexible etextbooks at reasonable prices.

According to the release, Thuze has produced over 100 titles in their etextbook library with subjects ranging from general-education and business to the social sciences and education. All of the etextbooks have been reviewed by respected academic professionalsand incorporate interactive, online reading as an important part of their design. More than 20 higher education institutions throughout the United States and Canada have adopted the etextbooks into their curriculum for the fall 2013 semester, including California State University, Georgia State University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Alberta.

Currently, all Thuze etextbooks are offered to students for $35. The format of the etextbooks provides students with flexibility by allowing them to study anytime and anywhere on their mobile devices.

If you would like to learn more, visit:
http://bridgepoint.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=453