Abstract
A survey conducted in the fall of 2015 at American University in Washington, DC shows that rising textbook prices similarly affect students at an expensive private university as those at community colleges and state schools. Research on high textbook costs that has demonstrated corollary unwanted behavior changes in students, including not purchasing the book, resorting to illegal online downloads, and poor study habits, were confirmed at American University as well. Solutions that have been proposed to this problem of prohibitive textbook prices, including Open Educational Resources (OER), could have an equally profound impact at American University, and potentially similar private universities, as has been demonstrated at less selective and more affordable counterparts.
Highlights
Textbooks are typically an important part of the post-secondary instructional model (Altbach, Kelly, Petrie & Weis, 1991; Fischer, Hilton III, Robinson & Wiley, 2015), and traditional print textbooks have long been regarded as a foundational instrument for knowledge transfer (Lowe, 2009; Williams, 2014)
Students were asked several questions related to specific textbook costs. 80% (n=88) of students indicated that 2–4 courses required expensive textbooks during the surveyed semester, with 3 courses being the most common response at 35% (n=38)
A number of studies that look at how students deal with the rising cost of textbooks have been conducted, a unique purpose of this study was to explore whether the predominant findings held up at a much more expensive private university – a setting with student demographics not often associated with issues like affordability and access as much as their community college counterparts
Summary
Textbooks are typically an important part of the post-secondary instructional model (Altbach, Kelly, Petrie & Weis, 1991; Fischer, Hilton III, Robinson & Wiley, 2015), and traditional print textbooks have long been regarded as a foundational instrument for knowledge transfer (Lowe, 2009; Williams, 2014). One study across multiple general education courses at seven different community and state colleges found that the average textbook price was $90.61 (Hilton III, Robinson, Wiley & Ackerman, 2014). Students have responded to high textbook prices in many ways, most notably by not purchasing required textbooks. In one of the largest (n=22,906) surveys of students about their textbook habits conducted by the Florida Virtual Campus (2016), 66.6% of students surveyed had not purchased a textbook because of cost. A separate study of 2,039 students found that most students (94%) who skipped buying or renting some of their required textbooks due to cost did so while simultaneously recognizing that doing so would negatively impact their academic performance in that course (Senack, 2014)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
