Make Textbooks Affordable

Everyone knows that textbooks costs are out of control.  The average student spends $900 per year, and prices are rising four times the rate of inflation!

It’s no accident that textbooks are so expensive.  Publishing companies have been raking in huge profits while engaging in bad practices that drive up costs: issuing new editions that make used books hard to find, bundling textbooks with unnecessary CDs and pass-codes, and more.  They get away with it because students don’t have a choice -- we’ve got to buy the book they’re selling, even if the price is outrageous.

The good news is that we have all of the technology we need to make textbooks affordable.  Already, there are rental programs at more than 1,500 colleges, hundreds of sites selling used books and more ways to save than ever before.  There's also new solutions like open-source textbooks, which could literally revolutionize how much students pay for their books.

We're fighting to rein in costs by promoting cost-saving solutions on campus, while also tackling publishers' stranglehold on the market to change prices for good.  We're educating students, faculty and bookstores, and raising awareness through research and the media.   We're also calling on publishers, colleges and foundations to support the creation of more open-source textbooks that could save students millions each year.