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Custom textbooks that offer little incremental value beyond the standard editions are developed in a coordinated effort between publishers, faculty, and bookstore operators. These books are often priced extremely high, and their exclusive availability in the college bookstores thwarts students from renting or purchasing used editions of these textbooks elsewhere.

How is this cycle burdening schools with unintended costs from poorly prepared and under-performing students who don’t persist to completion?

If it is possible to provide complete availability of course materials, a robust used and rental marketplace, and access to free teaching materials like Open Educational Resources, then why are college administrators not more engaged in exploring alternatives to stocking textbooks in their physical stores?

In the end, we see the conversation about textbook costs as moving into a broader circle, involving the college CFO, provost, and president. College presidents have not been fully engaged in considering how schools meet this critical student need more efficiently. But since they are also under enormous pressure to cut costs and improve educational outcomes, the day when college presidents turn their attention to this key piece of student performance is surely close at hand.

textbook delivery and bookstore services are only now becoming a prominent issue for CFOs

charging students exorbitant mark-ups on course materials to help fund school initiatives is becoming an increasingly questionable practice in higher education.

National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), between 25% and 33% of students reported not even buying required textbooks.

Cost is the biggest issue chasing students away

Access to high-quality, low-cost textbooks is the most important service schools can provide

Used books are the most important resource to the future of schools’ bookstores

Financial aid, designed to assist financially-challenged students, is actually leading them to the most expensive options for textbooks

In the face of competition, schools still believe they will be in the business of selling textbooks out of a brick-and-mortar in the coming years This might be the most surprising outcome of the survey

What Can You Do? Best Practices Bookstore Services Audit If you wish to further examine the issue of textbook affordability at your school, what can you do? We recommend starting with an audit of your bookstore practices, taking into consideration how the economic model is changing as well as how student preparedness affects overall student academic performance. We have put together the Akademos Textbook Affordability Best Practices Audit to assist you with evaluating both the health and the mission of your textbook practices. As always, you can also reach out to us directly to have a conversation about your textbook delivery mission and practices.

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Year-Round Buyback

A sale on the institutional level would mean that 30 out of 30 students would get the digital textbook, bringing back into the marketplace fully two-thirds of the prospective customers.  You can lower your price on individual units if you can make it up in volume

To have textbooks come pre-installed, college publishers now approach institutions directly, not through the individual instructor.  Not all institutions can or will play this game; I think it unlikely that elite institutions will insist that instructors use an approved text.  But this model has already become the norm in commercial schools and is climbing up the tree, stopping at community colleges and  financially-constrained state colleges, and slowly getting attention at some universities.   Over time this marketing method will transform college publishing.

The benefits to this method are many. First, these sales are made directly to institutions, which finance the purchases in various ways, increases to student fees among them.  This cuts out the bookstore, saving 20%-50% of the selling price.  Second, the books are digital, which saves more money.  And then–bonanza!–the colleges make the books available to all enrolled students, ending the trend of students working without texts.  This strategy effectively puts an end to the used-book market.

it is not hard to envision a time when faculty has the same status within a university as an employee has in a corporation.

a whittling away at the prerogatives of individual instructors.