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When college textbooks went digital, NJ students lost choice

By: Mary Ann Koruth
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... Is there a college student - or parent - who has not winced at the price of a textbook?
..... Today's digital textbooks are no different. Most now require an access code for a fee or are tied to automatic payments hat show up on tuition statements.
..... Student are unceasingly seeing automatic billing, bundled platforms and digital paywalls that change them "by default and limit choice," according to a recent survey of 4,000 college students at 107 colleges conducted by the Student public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs), a campus organization and advocate for open access and affordable textbooks.
..... Homework is attached to "Rented" digital books that are almost always no longer available to students once the subscription ends.
..... And for some courses, when college bookstores do stock those expensive, hard-bound textbooks, they have to be rented.
..... Keven Li, a Rutgers University senior who majors in mechanical engineering, was browsing in Rutgers' officials bookstore operated by Barns & Noble in New Brunswick when he came across a textbook on fluid dynamics, recommended for a course during the spring semester.
..... It was not for sale - but he could rent the physical copy for the semester for $98, or rent it digitally at $80 for a year, or for $65 for six months, or $98.75 for five years.
..... Another option was a paperback copy, available on Amazon for $90.
..... Li decided to take another course.
..... Li paid a "digital book charge" of $159.99 in the Fall 2022 semester along with tuition and other changes for a calculus course. he also paid $79.96 to Persons education for a math lab for that same course.

Incensed content through First Day

..... The "digital book charge" was for course materials presided by First Day, a system that provides licensed content through an agreement between Rutgers and Barnes & Noble College, whose parent company, Barnes & Noble Education (BNED), says on its website that it drives affordability and access at hundreds of academic institutions across the country.
..... BNED spun off form tis parent, the well-known retail book-selling chain, in 2015.
..... First Day charges appear on students' tuition statements, giving them access to course materials as soon as classes begin. Li knew he could opt out of paying for it., but he could not figure out how. in any case, he needed the materials it provided, he said.

A problem not just of cost, but choice

..... Chris Wu knows the feeling.
..... "I can say I've spent over $1,000 on textbooks over four years," said Wu, a Rutgers senior and communications major, who took extra shifts at work to cover those costs. Some of her large classes incurred about $200 in charges through First Day, but she lost access after the class ended.
..... Congress has funded an Open Textbook Pilot program since 2018 to tackle prices, and universes encourage professors to cerate their own course material.
..... Open copyright licenses permit free use and distribution, said Nicole Allen of the Scholalry Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, an open access advocate. the problem of Online, affordable textbooks is "bifurcating" into a problem of choice, said Allen.
..... "On the one hand, there's positive progress toward sue of free and high quality materials, but on the other, the rise of access codes and automatic billing has exacerbated many issues students have faced for years," she said.
..... "It used to be that subnets had a lot of expensive choices, but the direction the textbooks industry is pushing is to give students no choice at all," she said.

Rutgers sues bulk licensing model to lower costs

..... Rutgers University said that e-content is often cheaper and that it does not charge for entire textbooks.
..... "Rutgers does not place charges for full textbooks on student's bills," said Rutgers spokesperson Dory Devlin. "In certain courses, instructors adopt specialized digital course materials that are delivered through a bulk licensing model.
..... "This ensures that all students have immediate access to required e-materials - often at a significantly reduced cost compared to purchasing the individually."
..... "When a bulk license is sued, the change is added to the student's term bill solely for these specific e-materials, not for traditional textbooks," Devlin said.
..... "In thees cases, students are automatically opted i so they can access the materials on day one," but they can opt out be a deadline and have the charges removed from their bill, she said.
..... But Allen said that "the savings are not a strong justification for automatic billing," because students who could still shop for cheaper e-books lost that option.
..... And universities contracting with bookstores sometimes have "high participation quotas for automatic billing programs," according to an earlier PIRG review of 171 contracts, including universities that use third-party booksellers.
..... Montclair State University contracts with Follett, another bookstore operator, and New Jersey City University contracts with BibliU, a Texas-based company.

Rutgers faculty paid to use lower-cost materials

..... Universities have tired to address the high cost by offering incentive to faculty.
..... Through its Open and Affordable Textbooks Program, Rutgers offers instructors $3,500 in research funds to author a textbook, and $2,500 to redesign a course using open or low-cost materials, said librarian Rhonda Marker, who heads open knowledge strategies at the university.
..... "There is no upper threshold or lower limit," she said. "We are willing to fund as many good quality applications as we get."

Professors saving students money

..... Students are bearing the brunt of a shift to digital, including hidden or sudden costs like the $79 that Li shelled out to Pearson for his math lab.
..... So it was a relief for Sofia Moroch, a Rutgers freshman studying psychology and economics, to escape those costs during the most recent fall semester. Her professor, Stephen Kilianski, has posted his own textbook for students to sue in a statistics prerequisite course since 2020.
..... "The professor gives us everything up front and I don't feel I'm missing out on anything," she said.
..... Kilianski wanted to save students money - they used to pay $50 for a semester-long e-book subscription that then expired - but he was also frustrated with textbooks that try to "be all things to all people" to maximize sales, he said.
..... "It took me the course of a summer, and I really enjoyed doing it," Kilianski said.
..... But some classes don't lend well to textbook authoring by professors, Kilianski said he can't cerate an e-book for his social psychology course because teaching it requires using copyrighted material that needs publisher permission to use.
..... "I do inform students that all exam times are based on what is said and shown in lecture, so purchasing access tot eh text is not required," Kilianski said. "Most of them just rely on lecture notes."

Students not aware they were enrolled in auto-billing

..... Half of the students at schools with auto billing did not know they were billed or did not know they could opt out, the recent PIRG report said. Even among seniors, nearly one in 10 enrolled in auto-billing did not know they were.
..... Some 70% of students skipped purchasing course materials because of cost but then worried about grades - through fewer skipped buying an aces code than a textbook.
..... Rutgers junior Anika Thakur, a public health and nursing major, said she has spent about $760 over three years on First Day, the auto-billing program - but she only realized that after she joined NJ-PIRG as a volunteer intern this semester. Her highest charge was $230 last fall. [2025] "I was really surprised to see that, because I hadn't personally gone out and bought any course materials," she said. "If you don't opt out, they put on your tuition bill and you end up paying it anyway."
..... Li spent about $600 to $700 on textbooks and codes each year as a freshman and sophomore. He felt fortunate to have professors who supplied lecture materials and slides in junior and senior year.
..... Once he wised up to the cost, he talked to students to identify cheaper courses and enroll in them.
..... Missing out on owning his textbooks and homework exercises in his early calculus classes was a setback because the math "builds on itself," and "is really core to my success - it's a very fundamental course that a lot of engineers take."
..... He would have liked to keep those calculus books as a reference. I" tried to take good notes," he said, "but obviously, it's nothing compared to ahivng the actual textbook in front of you."

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