There's a new battle afoot in the long-running war over expensive college textbooks, one that could deal a major blow to textbook subscription programs promoted by publishers and criticized by student advocates.
The U.S. Department of Education recently began Re-evaluation of financial aid rules beginning in 2016, which effectively allow colleges to automatically bill students for books and supplies as long as those materials meet criteria that include being sold at below-competitive market prices.
This practice has allowed for the growth of a digital subscription business model for textbooks, in which publishers sign deals with universities and bookstores to charge students fees in exchange for access to mostly online versions of the course materials assigned for their classes. Known in the publishing industry as “inclusive access” or “equitable access” programs, their proponents say they benefit students by saving them money and ensuring they have all the materials they need at the beginning of the semester.
Current rules require that these agreements allow students to opt out, allowing them to shop around for better prices on textbook rentals or secondhand copies. But opponents of this subscription model have long argued that it is too difficult for students to opt out, either because of the labyrinthine processes involved or because the option is often poorly publicized on campus. And because some subscription programs include educational software systems that professors use to grade assignments and administer tests, sometimes students who opt out are unable to participate in their classes.
Now the federal government is considering changing the rules in ways that would essentially make it harder for colleges to automatically charge students for books as long as they allow students to opt out. Instead, institutions would have to invite students to opt in to pay for textbook subscription programs by authorizing these types of charges.
Such a change would not necessarily doom “inclusive access” programs, say both supporters and detractors, but it could undermine the business model, which relies on universities handing publishers student customers on a large scale in exchange for volume discounts.
“The efficiencies of the opt-out model would be lost,” says Richard Hershman, vice president of government relations for the National Association of College Stores.
The White House support indicated for the potential rule change. The next step in the process would be for the Department of Education to formally propose the change in the Federal Register and open a public comment period. For a rule change to take effect in mid-2025, the regulations would need to be finalized by Nov. 1. Otherwise, any changes would take effect in mid-2026.
Looking for savings
The textbook business generates strong opinions from nearly everyone in higher education, and the question of whether subscription services help or hurt students is a contentious one.
Sydney Greenway, a senior at the University of Pittsburgh, advocates for affordability of course materials through Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs). Her first encounter with the “inclusive access” model was during her freshman year at Wayne State University, when she saw a charge for course materials on her tuition bill that she didn’t recognize.
“I didn’t know what it was, I couldn’t click on it, I couldn’t unsubscribe,” she explains. “I had to wait until the first day of class for them to explain it to me.”
Her professor told the class that the fee was part of a program designed to save students money by giving them a digital textbook. That explanation made sense to Greenway — until she did some searching and found the same textbook on a different website for a lower price. When she started using the assigned digital book, she realized she didn’t like not being able to print out her readings and not being able to highlight and annotate the text online.
“If I read it only on my laptop, I won’t retain it,” he says.
Since learning more about textbook options, Greenway has made it a priority to find low-cost options that she can interact with in whatever way she prefers. Her first choice, she says, is to have a professor assign her a free, open educational resource that she can print out as a PDF at the library. Her second choice is to search eBay or another online retailer for a physical copy of a used textbook. As a last resort, she’ll go to her college bookstore and rent a used version. She estimates that shopping around has saved her hundreds of dollars on course materials each semester.
“If I don’t pay $500 for textbooks, that’s the equivalent of a month’s rent. I can buy food other than ramen,” she explains. “It really helps me financially.”
However, defenders of textbook subscription services argue that they are also saving students money. They point to data showing that the cost of course materials has stabilized recently and that Student spending on textbooks is declining after years of rebounds.
“The savings are real,” Hershman says. “If the material is not priced below the competition in the market,” he adds, “it cannot be part of the program.”
But a new report The Student PIRGs study casts doubt on whether textbook subscription programs can truly take credit for those financial trends. The research, which analyzed 171 textbook subscription contracts at 92 colleges and universities, “could not find clear evidence that these contracts provide savings to students,” said report co-author Dan Xie, policy director for Student PIRGs. “If savings are indeed tied to automatic billing programs, it should be obvious from reading these contracts that there would be savings. It’s very problematic that we can’t find receipts for these savings,” especially given that federal rules require the programs to charge below-market rates.
Of course, publishers, bookstores, and universities themselves have other vested interests in the success of subscription programs. Hershman says bookstores save a lot of labor and time when they don’t have to handle used textbooks, and it’s “huge cost savings for publishers and retailers” when they don’t have to process textbook returns. Digital subscription programs also help combat textbook piracy, Hershman adds, in which students illegally download resources rather than pay for them.
And the Student PIRGs report found that in many cases, universities directly benefit from “inclusive access” deals by keeping a cut of the profits.
“In some ways, this may explain why there are some universities that oppose an opt-in policy,” says Nicole Allen, director of open education at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or SPARCwhich advocates for open access resources.
“When we're talking about the fees that students have been forced to pay for their institutions, which then give money to the bookstore and then give a portion to the universities,” he argues, it could create “potential retrograde incentives” in textbook affordability for students.
SPARC supports a potential proposed rule change that would require colleges to allow students to opt in, rather than opt out, of automatic billing for textbooks. That would put pressure on publishers, bookstores and colleges to prove to students that subscription programs really are an affordable option, Allen says.
“If the program offers a very good deal for students, there is no reason for it not to continue. If it is not a good deal for students, the program may not work, and it should not work if it is not a good deal for students,” he says. “You have to make it easy for them to accept it.”
