While other higher education costs, such as tuition, fees, and room and board, have soared dramatically, a student’s average annual expenditure for new textbooks has only increased approximately $6 per year for the last five years. Textbooks have received unwarranted blame for the rising cost of college, even though they account for less than five percent of the average student’s direct higher education expenditures.
Misguided, if well-intentioned, efforts by advocacy groups and some state legislators to address rising college costs by regulating the sale and distribution of textbooks and limiting professors’ choices have created misconceptions about college textbooks.
The www.TextbookFacts.org web site was created to:
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Correct these misperceptions;
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Provide useful information about textbook publishing; and
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Show how publishers are helping students succeed and responding to marketplace interest in expanded choice and flexibility.
Thanks to innovations in publishing, online technology, and a wider variety of learning tools, students and instructors have more choices, new ways to save, and increasingly more customized materials suited to meet individual learning styles and needs.
American publishers have a proud record of serving the evolving needs of college instructors and students. www.TextbookFacts.org explains that record. By continuing to provide the most modern and effective learning tools, we are investing in the promise of every student and in our nation’s future.
