The following excerpt features introductory statements and content specific to textbooks.  Here is the link to the full Fact Sheet.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing new steps to crack down on hidden junk fees as part of President Biden’s agenda to lower costs for students and families paying for college. Junk fees are hidden costs or surprise fees that companies and institutions include on customer or student bills, increasing their costs. 

Each year, students—including Federal student loan borrowers—incur billions in fees or additional unseen costs for unused meal account funds, using a college-sponsored credit card or banking account, paying for textbooks, or simply taking out a loan to pay for school. Additionally, students aren’t always provided clear and upfront opportunities to avoid fees for services they do not want. Obscured costs and misleading practices aren’t just frustrating—they cost millions of students and borrowers money.

• Eliminating Automatic Charges for Textbooks: The Department is undergoing negotiated rulemaking to reduce costs incurred by students in addition to tuition in higher education by ending the practice of automatic billing on tuition for textbooks. Under the draft proposal, students would now need to authorize a charge on their tuition bill for course materials. Competitive markets provide consumers choice and value, but automatic charges for textbooks and course materials leave students with little ability to meaningfully shop around for better prices or to utilize free and open-source textbooks. These changes, if proposed and finalized, would provide students with real choice and the ability to use the best textbooks at the most affordable price.

• Reducing the price of textbooks by investing in freely available textbooks. The Department’s Open Textbooks Pilot Program provides grants for institutions to create and use their own free textbooks and other open-source course materials. In fiscal year 2021 through 2023, the Department awarded slightly under $30 million to 17 grantees for this purpose. The total federal investment in the Open Textbooks Pilot Program through 2023 is $47 million. The President’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Proposal calls for funding the Open Textbooks Pilot Program.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition/SPARC* is a non-profit advocacy organization that supports systems for research and education that are open by default and equitable by design. 

InclusiveAccess.org is a community-driven initiative to raise awareness of the facts about automatic textbook billing. The cost of college textbooks has increased sharply over the last several decades, which has harmed student access and success. Everyone agrees that this is a problem. As higher education leaders consider new textbook sales models that advertise lower costs, the campus community deserves to fully understand how these models impact students and faculty.

Ryan Nadeau
Research and Student Success Librarian
rnadeau@fandm.edu
717-358-3896

For a complete review of our affordability studies of both F&M students and faculty, please see:

Barnes, C.A., Vine, S., & Nadeau, R. (2024) Assessing textbook affordability before and after the COVID-19 pandemic: Results of student and faculty surveys. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 50(2).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2024.102864