Every semester, college students walk the aisles of their school’s bookstore. They wander between shelves of $200 math textbooks and psychology books more expensive than a month’s groceries, searching for copies they may never even open.
From 1977 to 2015, the price of college textbooks skyrocketed 1,041%. Sixty-five percent of students reported not buying all required course reading because it was too expensive, according to a 2014 report for the Public Research Institute Groups.
But when students step into the bookstore at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon, they find many books offered for less than $40. Those books are thanks to the college’s independently run Chemeketa Press.
Since its 2015 launch, the press has printed 33 titles and saved students more than $2.5 million.
In one case, a textbook for an art appreciation course — a class that helps students meet a humanities requirement— used to cost $200.
Today it costs $36.50. Not only are students saving money, but by using a textbook created by the instructor, they gain insight into local artists and a new definition of what art appreciation means.
The school’s administration set out to make sure the cost of a book never deterred someone from taking a class. In 2015, using grant funding and school support, the college opened the press. They collaborate with instructors to write the textbooks, and after students and faculty revise and edit, the final product is sent to print.
At community colleges, where students are more likely to be low-income, the money saved can influence student success and graduation rates.
Brian Mosher, the managing editor of Chemeketa Press, told NationSwell that he loves “the idea of comparing the money a student saves on a textbook with what they could do with that money instead.”
It might mean working fewer hours at a job or taking out smaller loans. For some, the money saved could be put toward taking an extra class, moving that student one step closer to graduation.
While cost savings was what launched Chemeketa Press, faculty and administration also saw it as an opportunity to create more effective books.
Instead of jumping from chapter eight to chapter 23, then back to chapter 14, or using books filled with jargon and confusing syntax, instructors write books that follow their course outline. Classroom testing and evaluation can take years to complete in traditional publishing. For a Chemeketa Press book, it only takes a few months and revisions can be added when there’s a reprint. Instructors are paid for their time and have the chance to become published writers.
“We’re not looking to change the way the class is taught, we’re looking to replace a book and teach the same class,” he said.
But Mosher said the instructors aren’t doing it for the compensation or author credit. They’re doing it to save their students money.
“Most of the faculty who end up with their name on the cover of a book, that’s just a bonus,” Mosher said. “They’re saying they have passion for their students, they want their students to succeed, and they see the hardship of expensive textbooks.”
And the textbooks work. Through institutional research, Chemeketa Press compared the passing percentages of an intermediate algebra class. With the same instructor, one class used the traditional, $140 textbook and another used Chemeketa Press’ $36 book.
Each class had the same passing rate, Mosher said.
“This book can hold water next to [one from] the professional, big time, commercial publisher,” Mosher said.
Professors can connect with Chemeketa Printing Press on its website, where five textbooks are available for purchase through its site. Chemeketa Press is also partnering with other colleges to help students save money by getting these books in their hands.
Mosher said the goal is to create a self-sustaining model that other community colleges across the nation can adopt.
“That’s our long-term, big dream,” Mosher said. “We think any community college across the country can do this.”
More: For Prisoners, Reading Is so Much More Than a Pastime — It’s a Way to Change Their Lives
Tag: College affordability
Millions of College Students Lose Out on Financial Aid Because of the FAFSA. Here Are 4 Solutions
We’ve all heard the news reports about the massive amounts of debt that college graduates leave school with. (On average, each student owes $29,400.)
Which makes the FAFSA (short for Free Application for Federal Student Aid), the form that helps students get funding for college, more important than ever. But there are major hurdles in completing it: It’s complicated, boring, and many students and their parents don’t even know about it.
Because of these reasons, millions of low- and middle-income students don’t fill it out each academic year — meaning that they’re missing out on grants, loans and work-study programs. It also might mean they skip college altogether because they think it’s unaffordable.
MORE: Delaware Pushes to Get More Low-Income Students Enrolled in Higher Education
But it’s crucial for all students to complete their FAFSA. As NPR reports, “Research shows that many of the students who don’t fill out the form would be eligible to go to college at a cost of next to nothing if they did.”
So how do we make the FAFSA more accessible?
1. Make the form shorter and simpler. Some lawmakers have proposed that the FAFSA can be condensed into two pieces of information: their family size and household income two years prior. This form will come in the handy-dandy size of a postcard.
2. Bombard them with text reminders. The sky is blue, the grass is green, teens like to text. According to NPR, University of Virginia researchers found that when high school seniors were texted about finishing their FAFSA, they were 5 to 8 percent more likely to enroll into a two-year institution compared with seniors who didn’t get the texts. Another study found that when community college freshmen received the reminders, they were 12 percent more likely to fill out the form for sophomore year.
3. Streamline FAFSA with federal tax returns. It’s an idea that would cut out the complications of filing a FAFSA altogether since a student’s financial aid eligibility would be indicated by their family’s tax return, according to the Hechinger Report. There’s also the suggestion to reserve Pell Grants for families below 150 percent of the federal poverty level (about $35,000 for a family of four), with smaller grants for families between 150 and 250 percent (almost $59,000 for a family of four), the report stated.
4. Check up on them. This is a plan proposed by the Commander in Chief himself. President Obama wants to launch an online FAFSA completion tool that helps high schools verify whether students have completed the form or not (and then nudge them to finish it). There’s already a similar tool, where anyone can see the overall rates of FAFSA completion at various high schools nationwide.
DON’T MISS: Ask the Experts: How Can We Keep From Drowning in College Debt?