How Profs Dodge Royalties Bullet

College instructors teach courses in the subjects on which they are experts. Faculty also share their expertise by writing books on the same subjects. What should professors do when they’re tapped to lead courses on the identical subject matter covered by their books?

Some faculty choose to assign their own books as required reading, but are taking great pains to avoid profiting much—if at all—from the sale of books to their students, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In these cases, the books in question aren’t particularly costly as textbooks go, so the issue centers on the royalties paid to the authors.

Some instructors negotiate special discounts with their publishers on behalf of students to offset the royalties. Others estimate how much in royalties they might receive from students’ purchases and donate that amount to a campus cause or scholarship, or treat the class to lunch. For some classes, professors may use just one or two chapters of their book and provide free printouts to students.

Another tactic is to allow students to borrow the instructor’s copies of the book, although one professor noted in the article that only one student had accepted his loan so far.

One adjunct professor interviewed for the article considers most textbooks on the same topic to be “interchangeable” and she “questioned the need for assigning one’s own work.” In the event a professor decides to adopt his own book anyway, she suggested asking the publisher to simply pocket the royalties on books sold to the class instead of paying it.

Studies Paint Different Picture of Student Debt

New statistics from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study show fewer college students are taking out loans to pay for their education, while another report indicates that a large chunk of student debt is concentrated in families with the means to pay it off.

The federal study, according to Inside Higher Ed, found that 38% of full- and part-time undergraduates had taken out student loans for the 2015-16 academic year, compared to 42% for the 2011-12 year (the last time the study was conducted). The drop occurred across the board at private and public institutions, two- and four-year schools, and even at for-profit colleges.

The average loan amounted to $7,600, up about $500 from four years prior. However, that average includes loans by students at for-profit schools, who typically borrowed much more than students attending nonprofit institutions.

One reason for the decline in borrowing rates may be that grants to college students increased during the period covered by the study, from an average of $6,200 up to $7,600.

A separate study by the Urban Institute found that half of college student debt was held by families earning the top 25% of income (roughly $81,140 or more per year) and the top 10% accounted for almost one-fourth of student debt, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The concentration of education debt among the relatively affluent means that some policies designed to reduce the burden of education debt are actually regressive. Focusing on lowering the interest rate on all outstanding student debt or on forgiving large amounts of that debt would bestow significant benefits on relatively well-off people,” wrote the researchers.

CM-X Probes Strategies to Trim Textbook Cost

While the issue of higher education affordability simmers, some point to required course materials as a cost that could be reduced without undermining students’ learning. As the campus information hub for course materials, college bookstores must stay on top of new formats, programs, and practices.

The second Course Materials eXperience (CM-X) will help course materials specialists and store managers become knowledgeable about new developments and operational efficiencies to keep costs down for students. CM-X is a concentrated track within Campus Market Expo (CAMEX) hosted by NACS in Dallas, TX.

CM-X opens with a networking event on Friday evening, March 2, and then moves into a full day of educational presentations, roundtable discussions, and a working lunch. As a followup to last year’s CM-X publisher panel, a new group of executives from the major textbook publishers will offer their thoughts on how the industry is evolving. Other sessions will explore inclusive-access programs, open educational resources, hybrid course materials, and modernizing course materials management.

The program wraps up Sunday at the CAMEX trade show with more presentations in the Course Materials Theater, visits with suppliers of academic materials and technologies in the Course Materials Pavilion, and networking in the Course Materials Collaboration Lounge. CM-X registrants are welcome to return to the show on Monday and Tuesday.

CM-X registrants also have an opportunity to attend a bonus Friday session about course materials leadership on campus. Prior to CAMEX, a webinar exploring faculty and students perspectives on course materials will prepare registrants for the in-person event.

Visit Course Materials eXperience for program details and registration information. Register by Jan. 12 to receive early-bird discount pricing.

Small Student Loans May Help, Not Harm

Are student loans a burden or a boost? The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) attempted to find out in a recent study.

The study, summarized in a report on MarketWatch, focused on the financial-aid notification letters sent to students at a community college. One randomly assigned group received letters that listed their eligibility for grant and scholarship aid, along with an offer to borrow $3,500-$4,500 in federally subsidized student loans. The other group’s financial-aid letters offered “$0” in federal loans.

Not surprisingly, students in the first group “were 40% more likely to borrow than their peers who received an offer of zero,” said the MarketWatch report. However, it also turned out that these borrowers enrolled in more course credits the following term, earned a higher grade-point average in those courses, and transferred at a higher rate to four-year institutions.

In short, the NBER study concluded, having access to federal loan funds enabled and motivated these students to make faster progress in their higher education. Students who had to rely on other means couldn’t afford to take as many classes and were less likely to complete their studies.

“The big takeaway from this paper is that restricting students’ access to federal student loans, either through making the process of getting the loans more complicated or more opaque or completely opting out of the federal loan program, can harm students’ attainment and potentially make them worse off,” said researcher Lesley Turner, an economics professor at the University of Maryland.

Those with ‘Some’ College Need More Push

Some 31 million adults in the U.S. have earned enough college credits to be classified as “near-completers,” but it will take a village to help them cross the finish line to graduation, according to a new report from the Education Commission for the States.

The commission “looked at the progress of legislation and initiatives in the area,” said an article in Education Dive, and found they were overall insufficient to boost graduation rates among dropouts. Some legislative measures were well-intentioned and may have helped new enrollees—such as state policies and funded programs designed to improve the affordability of higher education—but they didn’t move the near-completers any closer to completion.

One reason is that near-completers may have been unaware of such policies and programs, or weren’t motivated to take advantage of them. The senior policy analyst who wrote the report told Education Dive that “a consistent hurdle for states is they often need a champion for near-completers, in the form of a governor or other prominent figure, to help garner interest from institutions, policymakers, and the community at large” in contacting and encouraging near-completers to return to the classroom.

The report lauded those states that had introduced initiatives aimed directly at near-completers. For example, the University of Rhode Island works with the commercial fisheries industry while in Tennessee a new “last-dollar” scholarship program assists adults who need just a little more aid to cover the rest of their school costs.

Community colleges generally do a better job of reconnecting with dropouts than four-year institutions, according to the report.

A Different Approach to Higher Ed

The traditional model of higher education just wasn’t working for students of Paul Quinn College, Dallas, TX. The school’s solution was to incorporate flexibility, experiential learning, and entrepreneurial thought.

Under the New Urban College Model, the first federally recognized urban work college, participating students are employed for 10-20 hours a week and earn an annual stipend of up to $2,000 each academic year. Since nearly half of Paul Quinn students live at or near the poverty level, the institution uses open-sourced course materials so students don’t have choose between helping their families financially or buying textbooks. Varsity football was also eliminated and the field turned into an organic farm, providing hands-on learning and helping to feed the surrounding community.

The effort has driven down the cost to attend Paul Quinn College from nearly $24,000 annually to just under $15,000 for residential students. In addition, four-year loan debt averages are now less than $10,000.

“It is irresponsible to tell students from poverty that the way out of poverty is massive amounts of student loan debt,” said Paul Quinn President Michael J. Sorrell, during his presentation at the ASU + GSV Education Technology summit. “That is not right. We refuse to buy into that culture.”

The model has worked for Paul Quinn, which has been called an emerging national leader by The New York Times. Sorrell also earned a 2017 Social Innovator award from the Lewis Institute at Babson College for his efforts.

Job Market May Lure Away Students

Heading into the next decade, colleges and universities may have a tougher time selling prospective students on the need for a bachelor’s degree.

An article in The Sacramento Bee rounded up a lot of evidence that young people are gravitating to jobs that only require an associate degree or less. As the economy slowly warms up, companies are adding more of these higher-paying blue-collar positions—roughly 2.5 million of them, according to USA Today.

More companies are also willing to provide extensive training and apprenticeships to new workers in order to gain the exact skills needed.

Of the 11 most rapidly growing jobs in the U.S. right now, just three mandate an advanced degree. Some fields are expected to explode with new jobs, such as carpentry, which is forecast for 24% growth within six years.

Initiative Promotes Graduating on Time

Missouri is addressing college affordability with an initiative called “15 to Finish” that encourages students to take 15 credit hours each semester. Fewer than a third of students at Missouri public institutions take 15 credit hours per semester, according to the nonprofit group Complete College America, even though that’s what it takes to graduate in four years.

As part of the program, the Missouri Department of Higher Education is working with Complete College America on promotional materials and ways to personalize the initiative for each campus in the state.

“In many cases, students need to take just one more three-hour course every semester to graduate on time,” Zora Mulligan, Missouri commissioner of higher education, said in a release. “But completing 15 hours of college credit each semester, students can graduate earlier, enter the workforce sooner, and save thousands of dollars in education.”

An issue for many students is that they are already in the workforce, trying to make ends meet while attending classes. The University of Missouri-St. Louis has been working to push more traditional students to take 15 credit hours for the last year, raising its four-year graduation rate to the highest level in school history, but administrators remain mindful that it’s not for every student.

“Lots of our students are holding full-time jobs, making it more difficult to have students managing a workload of 40 to 50 hours per week and classes,” Adam Bryd Jr., dean of enrollment services, said in an article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “But we’ve done this already. We’ll just work case-by-case, looking at their work schedule and class schedule. In many cases, our students find they can pick up an online class to get them those extra three credit hours.”

Some Will Pay Despite Oregon Promise

The Oregon Promise may not be as free as residents of the state were led to believe. The program was signed into law in July with the governor promising students an “undergraduate education tuition-free at their local community college.”

The promise provides tuition grants to high school students who graduated with at least a 2.5 grade-point average or earned a general educational development degree. They have to enroll in one of the community colleges in the state at least part-time within six months of high school graduation.

Most Oregon students will receive free tuition, according to the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission. However, the commission estimates about 3,700 will have to pay something, anywhere from a couple of dollars to about $300 per year, depending on where they enroll.

Oregon Promise deducts the amount students receive in Pell and state opportunity grants from the cost of tuition. Students are responsible for $50 per term and tuition charged for attending more expensive schools or additional costs from taking heavier class loads.

The Preferences of Online Students

Students who previously wouldn’t have enrolled into college are now doing so because of online education, according to a new report. Online College Students 2016: Comprehensive Data on Demands and Preferences counters some common misconceptions about online students and their preferences.

“This research demonstrates the important access that online education provides to students, while also highlighting the competitive and rapidly growing nature of the industry,” David Clinefelter, chief academic officer of Learning House and an author of the report, said in an article for eCampus News. “Current estimates place the number of students working towards their degrees online at 3.5 million; we expect that number to grow to five million by 2020. Institutions of higher learning cannot afford to ignore this population, nor can they resist catering to their needs and inclinations when it comes to choosing the program that is right for them.”

The research found that cost is the main factor for students in picking an online institution to attend, but even a small incentive can help. Students apply to online programs offered by colleges that are close to home, with 75% visiting the main campus at least once during the year.

About two-thirds of the responding students weren’t familiar with alternative learning pathways such as massive open online courses and micro degrees, and 55% who did know about alternative credentials never considered them while searching for an online program. The report advised colleges and universities looking into these programs to do a better job of communicating the value offered to students.

Online students choose and apply for programs in which they’re interested much quicker than was commonly thought. The research also found that while business remains the top online program for graduate students, computer and IT courses have surpassed education in popularity.

Metrics to Help Students Succeed

A new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) proposed a new metrics framework to help institutions measure student performance. The report lists performance, efficiency, and equity as the measures by which colleges and universities can better serve students of all backgrounds.

The metrics are designed to assess students’ access, progress, completion, cost, and postcollege outcomes. They also look at college affordability, how resources impact completion, and the experience of all students.

“This report draws on the knowledge and experience of higher-education leaders and experts to lay out in detail the metrics we should be collecting—and explains why those data will make a difference for all students, but particularly for those who traditionally have been underserved by higher education,” said IHEP President Michelle Cooper in a report for eCampus News. “Until now, only some institutions have been willingly and voluntarily collecting data to answer critical questions about who attends college, who succeeds in and after college, and how college is financed. But, the field needs a core set of comprehensive and comparable higher ed metrics and should incorporate those metrics into federal and state data systems. Doing so will make the data available for all students in all institutions, not only those who voluntarily collect and report it.”

Colorado Plans for 3-Year Online Degrees

One possible way to lower the cost of higher education is to create degree programs that take less time to complete than the traditional four years. The University of Colorado, Boulder, has launched a grant program to get the effort started.

The CU system is asking faculty and staff to compete for three grants of $200,000 to develop fully online degree programs that can be completed in three calendar years. The university hopes to announce the grant recipients by the end of September and have the program running by 2018.

The program must be delivered by faculty from at least two of the CU campuses. The degree must also be in high demand and marketable since a key factor for the entries will be the number of new students they bring to the university.

“We’re counting on the innovation of our faculty and staff to be able to develop three-year, fully online programs that are going to meet the needs of students in high-demand areas in Colorado and beyond,” Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the CU system, said in a report in eCampus News.

Zero-Textbook- Cost Program Considered

California Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a program designed to allow community college students in the state to earn a degree with no textbook costs. The Zero-Textbook-Cost Degrees program would make it possible for students to earn a degree using only open educational resources (OER).

Under the proposal, community colleges would compete for grants of up to $500,000 to offer associate degrees, certificates, or credential programs that students can complete using only free and open textbooks. All of the materials would be available in the California Open Online Library for Education.

“We believe developing OER degree pathways at the community colleges is a reasonable next step,” Stephen Frank wrote in a post for California Political Review.

California is just the latest state to explore this route. The Virginia community colleges system has already funded three rounds of OER grants and begun development of OER degree pathways at each of the system’s 23 campuses. The University of Maryland University College, an online institution, has also announced that all of its degree programs will have zero textbook costs by the fall.

ConTEXT Looks at New Era of Textbooks

College textbook formats and how students acquire their reading materials have changed considerably in the past decade, as the report Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem has documented. What these changes mean and how they affect the foreseeable future for faculty, students, publishers, and sellers of content will be explored at Campus Market Expo 2016 (CAMEX), March 4-8 in Houston, TX.

ConTEXT, a mini-conference within CAMEX focusing on textbooks and technology, will take a look at new strategies and best practices, from digital formats and open educational resources to adaptive learning products and text-with-tuition models. Speakers will include Andy Hines, assistant professor and coordinator of the Foresight Program at the University of Houston, who will discuss how to make sense of the shifting course materials landscape.

“Thinking about students, how will the changes in their lives and needs influence higher education and approaches to learning?” Hines wrote in a recent article for The College Store magazine. “These changes may ultimately redefine the notion of what a course material is, as coursework spills over into work, play, relationships, and even participation in civic life.”

The ConTEXT track will feature 15 educational sessions related to course materials. The ConTEXT educational program is underwritten by the NACS Foundation, with support from Follett.

In addition, two showcases—custom/digital content solutions on March 4 and adaptive learning products on March 5—will give an overview of new products and services for academic content and how they benefit students and faculty. Among the participating suppliers are LAD Custom Publishing, RedShelf, XanEdu, Cengage Learning, Elsevier-Health Sciences, Pearson Education, and Wiley.

CAMEX attendees will also be able to learn more at the ConTEXT Pavilion during the trade show (March 6-8). Most of the exhibiting companies involved in course content and materials will be located in the vicinity of the pavilion and many will be demonstrating products in the ConTEXT Presentation Theater.

Webinar Looks at Future of Course Materials

To find out what lies ahead for the creation and distribution of learning content, NACS commissioned an extensive research and analysis project which involved interviews with dozens of people involved in higher education instruction and administration, academic publishing, content distribution and sales, and libraries and educational technology.

The findings from that project and their implications for higher ed will be examined in a free webinar, Exploring the Future Course Content Ecosystem on Campus, on Tuesday, Dec. 1, at 1 p.m. Eastern. The project and webinar were underwritten by the NACS Foundation.

The webinar will touch on changes in teaching and learning—as well as student access and affordability issues—that are driving the development of new kinds of course materials and in-class instructional materials. These include digital versions of textbooks, courseware that combines reading material and teaching modules, adaptive learning content, and open educational resources (OER).

As the needs of faculty and students have shifted over the years, so has the role of the campus bookstore. The webinar will discuss how stores will fit into the new course-content landscape and what strategies stores can adopt to support students’ and instructors’ success.

Presenting the webinar will be Tony Ellis, CAE, vice president, industry advancement, NACS.

Advance registration for the webinar is required. If you haven’t already set up a NACS login, you will be prompted to create one before registering.

New Measures of MOOC Success

Low completion rates remain an issue for massive open online courses (MOOCs). However, that’s not the only measure of success, according to leaders of the MOOC initiative at Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA.

Elke M. Leeds, associate vice president of technology-enhanced learning, and Jim Cope, executive director of distance learning, reported in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration that they found success in the MOOC initiative at KSU by looking at return on financial investment, branding, and student access.

“The new proposition shifts measures of success beyond just course completion to include measures that benefit students, faculty, and the institution,” they wrote in “MOOCs: Branding, Enrollment, and MultipleMeasures of Success.” “Students benefited through access to open educational resources, the acquisition of professional learning units at no cost, and the potential of college credit at a greatly reduced cost. Academic units benefited through a mechanism to attract students and future revenue, while the university benefited through digital impressions, branding, institutionally leveraged scalable learning environments, streamlined credit evaluations processes, and expanded digital education.”

Leeds and Cope determined that if four students enrolled in the institution’s two-year associated graduate endorsement program after taking a MOOC, their tuition would cover the production, design, and delivery costs of the MOOC. The first MOOC did much better than that, with 100 professional learning units awarded and 12 students enrolled in the endorsement program.

To evaluate the branding effect of the MOOC initiative at KSU, Leed and Cope documented more than 25,000 Twitter hashtag tweets and retweets about the program. They determined that 75% of the learners had either never heard of Kennesaw State or were largely unfamiliar with it, but all were engaged with learning materials produced by the university.

Leeds and Cope also reported that the program’s video lectures had more than 80,000 viewers, and nearly 4,000 unique viewers over a 10-month period in 2014. After just six weeks of offering MOOCs in 2015, they recorded more than 25,000 unique viewers to lectures, 28,000 streaming views, and more than 6,000 downloads of course materials.

“The traditional measures of success based on participation, retention, and completion only tell one side of the MOOC success story,” the authors wrote. “They can drive recruitment, offer cost reduction, and, in essence, become an educational product with reach far beyond that typically available to the university.”

ACE Launches Alternative Credit Project

The American Council on Education (ACE) submitted 111 low- or no-cost general education online courses to be part of its new Alternative Credit Project. Forty colleges and universities participating in the program will grant credit for these courses, which include business, critical thinking and writing, foreign language, humanities, mathematics, and natural and physical sciences.

ACE will collect data from the institutions on the number of credits accepted through the program, along with the progress and success rates of students who transfer in the courses. ACE uses faculty from regionally accredited institutions to review all courses in the Alternative Credit Project Ecosystem (ACPE) before they earn a credit recommendation.

“Nontraditional students, who often are balancing multiple family and career demands, now know where they can turn to take courses that will help them reduce the time and expense required to gain a postsecondary degree or credential at a number of outstanding institutions,” Deborah Seymour, ACE assistant vice president for education attainment and innovation, said in a press release.

The cost of the courses varies, but no participating provider is charging more than $300 per course, which includes course materials except lab kits.

Tool That Can Write Textbooks

The old notion that machines will someday replace workers may soon apply to academia. A Pennsylvania State University professor used a robot to build a textbook that he claims saved students $16,000 last semester.

Bart Pursel assembled a textbook for his Information, People, and Technology class using BbookX, a technology developed at Penn State that helps faculty use open-source materials to create content according to topics and keywords. Using the technology, Pursel was able to distribute the textbook to his class for free.

BbookX starts with an instructor creating a digital table of contents and assigning each chapter a topic with text or related keywords. The tool then uses matching algorithms to quickly gather content, according to the university release.

The university is also exploring ways to allow the content to be changed and updated. Professors will still have to review the titles, but the goal is to provide instructors choices to build a better book in the same way Netflix bases movie selections on what a viewer has previously watched.

“While building my textbook, I came across subjects and topics I hadn’t known about before,” Pursel said in a blog for The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I was able to learn something new and then pass that along to my students.”

Affordable Textbook Act Reintroduced

The Affordable College Textbook Act never got off the ground when it was introduced in 2013. Now, it’s being reintroduced as Congress works on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

The act, sponsored by Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Al Franken (D-MN) in the U.S. Senate and Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX) in the House of Representatives, would encourage the use of open-access textbooks by providing grants to schools to make free or low-cost digital content available to professors, students, and researchers.

The grant process would allow schools to conduct pilots aimed at expanding the use of open educational resources as a way to lower college expenses to students. Applicants would have to provide estimates on the potential cost savings, with priority placed on programs that save students the most.

Publishers would be required to make all textbooks and educational materials available for sale as individual pieces of content, rather than as a bundle. It also requires the Government Accountability Office to provide updates on price trends of college textbooks.

Blog Studies Book Costs by Major

Most of the rants about the expense of college textbooks that appear at the beginning of every term focus on total costs. Priceonomics, a conservative think tank, took a look at individual majors and found the average class costs for some are four times the amount of the least expensive ones.

The site used data from the fall 2015 textbook list from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. It also assumed students purchased new versions of every required and optional textbook listed for the more than 750 courses on the list.

Economics students would pay $317 for books per class, topping the list. Language majors were second to economics at $268 per class, but sciences/social sciences filled the next nine slots. African-American studies books cost just $80 per class.

The most expensive book was a biochemistry text at $406 each. While physics textbooks cost an average of $158 per book, engineering books were $124 per title. English and literature books were the least expensive, with an average of $19 per text. The best books at buyback were music titles, which retained 68% of their value.

“In order to avoid these costs, many students may choose to buy used books, rent books, or pray the library has a book when they need it,” wrote Dan Kopf, author of the Priceonomics blog post. “There are also advocates pushing professors to choose open textbooks (textbooks for which there is no copyright). Though it may limit your long-term earning potential, our analysis suggests another way to lower your textbook cost is to choose a major in the humanities.”