By Madison Disney & Nick Palazzo
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers
The Problem
Towson University student Destiny Varnedoe pays between $150-$300 a semester on textbooks, depending on what classes she’s taking and what materials are required. Varnedoe feels pretty much the same way every semester: The cost is too much.
In the past, students like Varnedoe went to the campus bookstore or ordered textbooks online. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many students living far away from campus, that routine changed. For students, the thought of buying an expensive print textbook to read while sitting in front of a computer at home was hard to stomach.
Many students continue to pay full price for tuition and other expenses such as lab fees, athletic fees and academic fees — even though they aren’t on campus.
“When they tell us what our fees are, it goes in one ear and out the other,” said Zack Evans, a Towson student. “We don’t know where any of our money is going anymore.”
One of the most consistent expenses for any semester is textbooks. According to The National Association of College Stores, students spent an average of $415 per semester on textbooks in the 2018-2019 school year. Textbook prices have increased 88 percent between 2006 and 2016, largely due to publishers updating their materials, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For public colleges like Towson, The College Board estimates students pay $625 per semester for textbooks and supplies.
In a survey conducted in 2014, The U.S. PIRG also found that 94 percent of students who did not have their required textbook for their class felt that it had a negative impact on their academic progress. Simply relying on Internet searches to get them through their classes was not always effective and created the feeling of not receiving a full education. So colleges across the U.S. started looking for ways to help students.
The Minnesota Office of Higher Education formed a task force that found that a majority of student requests involved the access to alternative materials that were easier to access and less costly than normal textbooks. The group proposed making materials available in different formats to cater to student requests. The task force found that there were three acceptable formats that would serve various purposes and would be directly used by students: PDF, Word, and XML with images. Since finding these formats the most beneficial, the task force began their process of implementing these more.
Rick Davis, Towson’s copyright and scholarly communications librarian, took notice of similar concerns and requests from students, and decided to take part in the initiative to help make these types of alternatives a reality.
The Solution
Davis is a part of the Textbook Affordability Work Group, a team of student government leaders, an assistant provost, the head of faculty development center FACET, as well as two faculty members. The group is working on ways to give professors the ability to assign to students affordable, easily obtainable open-access course materials for physical and online use.
This group also assists faculty members when they’re looking for alternatives to expensive textbooks or course materials. It can help faculty who want to scan chapters from a book and share them on Blackboard without running into copyright issues. Members of the group will steer professors in the direction of how to use resources like e-reserve (reserving materials electronically) to access for distribution to classes, or how to scan portions of articles in databases.
The idea for this group originated from an idea the provost had as a response to a resolution from the SGA (Towson’s student government association). Student complaints about resource cost issues and excess student spending at TU were directly addressed, and will continue to play a role in the decision making to serve as basis for further action in the fall.
Textbooks continue to be one of the necessary tools for any form of learning. Faculty members are working to find resources for students that cut their bills but provide the same quality content.
According to an article in EdSource, textbooks that are more commercially used, such as McGraw-Hill and Pearson, make up about 80 percent of the textbook market for colleges. Creating PDFs of chapters from books like can be problematic due to copyright issues. So, Davis and his team are working to create access to free or low-cost versions of textbooks similar to the commercial materials professors would have used that professors can share on Blackboard, and versions to interact with by making edits for notes etc., for class distribution. These types of accessible materials also include lower-cost DVDs for streaming, and students can opt to access physical textbooks if needed through the library’s rental system.
Since COVID-19 began and classes moved online, the library has been ramping up eBooks under licenses that permit unlimited users simultaneously. The Textbook Affordability Group may be given funding from academic affairs to assemble a small collection of textbooks each year as they are updated for students to have easier access to for rentals. This will serve as a comparable alternative to buying the newest edition to a textbook every semester.
A few years ago, a University System of Maryland student organization petitioned the system to create a program that would support the creation of open-access textbooks. The result is The Maryland Open Source Textbook Initiative (MOST). Davis’ group applied for a faculty mini- grant through this initiative and has been able to help faculty redesign their course for online delivery. The grant is to assist educators in the time they must invest in researching what OERs they can use, and pays them back for the time they take in doing so.
The team at Towson applied for an institutional grant that they have been using to fund their own mini faculty grants for the last few years. Many faculty members in various departments are applying for these mini-grants in hopes of exploring whether they can find open textbooks or if they can create other types of learning materials that can be utilized for their courses and release to the public domain for others to use. Each department’s library liaison is there to assist in the search for openly licensed materials as well.
“They do just as well, if not better with the open the licensed materials, than if they do a commercial textbook, Davis said. “So, there’s no argument, it’s just really a matter of how faculty find the time to locate the adequate resources for their particular class and that’s why we have these things like this grant program to help pay for their extra time.”
Insights
Through the process of learning how to efficiently distribute these kinds of resources, Towson’s library faculty gained a better understanding of just how demanding it can be to provide comparable course materials. Not only do students need certain texts to be successful in their classes, but some courses require certain online exercises, videos, quizzes and more for better performances. These may seem beneficial to professors, but what they do not realize is the financial weight it can place on students.
While the ideas for cheaper alternatives have been introduced to faculty members, some have resisted because they believe physical textbooks are superior — or are simpler to assign to students. However, once some are persuaded these materials perform just as well, the challenge in getting faculty to adopt them isn’t over.
“The secondary challenge is that once you have convinced them of that, how to assist them,” Davis said. “As a librarian I can’t tell an anthropology professor what text he should use because I’m not a subject expert.”
Towson is one of the colleges that is using its library’s resources in an innovative way that fluctuates as learning circumstances do. While this initially seemed like a very university-specific approach, the group found that this approach can be used universally for many different student populations. This method has also been proven to be effective for community colleges. According to Davis, the smaller student populations and the ability to access text and supplies has shown how effective these solutions can be, even on a smaller scale. One example of how Towson became collaborative with its faculty was involving the book store with rental programs for students.
While the group anticipated the need for online textbooks to increase, Davis did not think the number of requests for textbooks, or streaming services and DVDs would skyrocket the way that they did. In the last year, since online learning went into full swing, professors went from submitting 15 requests for open access materials a week to about 125. Professors now more than ever are looking for ways to make their job easier in distributing their class resources, and for students to have an easier time accessing effective course materials.
If other universities were to try a similar approach, they would have to navigate through the ways they can increase faculty participation. Davis noted that most campuses that are leading these types of projects are using their library to push the idea, and if there are collaborations with faculty, or a university’s book store to create awareness for open course materials and their performance serving just as well as costly materials, there is more of a chance they will be utilized.
Evidence of Effectiveness
Although the process of finding cheaper alternatives is not always straightforward, and may lead faculty to spend more time curating materials, Davis and the group found that professors who have gone to the lengths of researching and utilizing open access texts are pleased they did — and perceived that students were also pleased with the decision. It saved them money and students had access to course materials.
Evidence of effectiveness is primarily anecdotal at this stage. Davis found that faculty and students alike share an appreciation for open access resources, and have an easier time obtaining them during a fully online semester. The group plans to follow up to measure the success of this program, and to solicit faculty and student feedback. They also plan to gather data on how many professors are using these types of course materials, and if there is a relationship between the ease of access and increase in use.
Limitations
While the idea of having free (or cheap) textbooks for all classes may sound ideal, it is not possible. Copyright law limits the number of open access resources that can be created. Plus, some online platforms only allow a certain number of users onto a page at once. This makes it tricky when navigating who is able to have access to text at a time, especially for TU, because some classes have multiple sections in the same semester.
Another limitation is the number of copies available for cheaper online alternatives. An example that Davis gave is faculty members coming across a Kindle version of their textbook for a cheaper price, but the book only being available for individual consumers, and not for a large group for a classroom setting.
One of the issues the group has run into is the faculty using commercial textbooks/platforms in their courses that require a code or fee to complete quizzes and homework assignments. The OERs that exist do not compete as well with these specific resources since they are not as sophisticated with their web design, and do not include access to these kinds of resources for free. Plus, not all titles are available for purchase. The types of books that have new versions every few years are not typically bought since they will constantly need to be replaced.
And, of course, some faculty — and even some students — will always prefer physical textbooks. But many would gladly give them up to save a significant sum of money.