During the fall 2017 semester, Wright State incorporated a new pilot project aimed at saving students’ money on textbooks in nine courses.
Professor Dan Krane of Wright State is the Ohio Faculty Council and chair of the Wright State Task Force on Affordability and Efficiency. Krane has been leading the effort alongside Student Government Association member Daniel Palmer.
“Textbook costs have increased over the years, there’s also a 5.5 percent sale,” Krane said.
During the governor’s budget creation last summer, public two-year and four-year institutions were required to get the costs of textbooks down for students.
Several courses utilized both inclusive access and open education course resources online, according to Krane.
“Inclusive Access is when the university approaches the middle man, a negotiator like the bookstore,” Krane said. “We tell the bookstore that we will extract say $75 per student for the book that is needed in the class. The bookstore takes the price to the publishers and they come back with a list. That’s what we did with our introduction to biology course.”
These alternatives have saved more than $56,000 on average and in the fall 2018 semester the project will expand to 40 courses saving students $300,000.
Austin Rains, student member of the Board of Trustees is also involved in the working group of the initiative.
“It’s really encouraging to see students, faculty and administration working together,” Rains said. “We’re saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and this will help as we work on more initiatives.”
Last month, the results were presented to the Board of Trustees and according to Krane, “the initiative prevailed the board.”
Starting in the fall semester schools such as Toledo University, Kent State, Cleveland State and several others will launch pilot programs following WSU.
In the next five years Krane expects all schools across the state of Ohio will begin their own textbook initiative similar to WSU, saving students $300 million a year in total.
