I am a professional researcher. My world revolves around data: verifiable facts, concise figures, and reliable statistics. I don’t make a habit of dealing in politics, and I don’t think about happenings in our nation’s capital very often. But recently I heard about a counterintuitive – and counterproductive – move being made by a government agency that concerned me enough to break my usual pattern.
The U.S. Department of Education is planning to change the rules that make possible a highly effective type of digital course material program that is currently in use at well over a thousand colleges and universities across the country. These programs are known under a variety of titles, including Inclusive Access and Equitable Access, and were developed under Obama-Biden era guidelines aimed at making course materials more affordable, and more accessible.
To understand the importance of these rules – and why the Department of Education should leave them in place – it helps to look at the data as it relates to two critically important elements: affordability and student outcomes.
When it comes to affordability, the current rules were crafted to enable students to use their Title IV monies – that means grants and loans – to purchase course materials, provided that the course materials are offered below current market rates.
How did the affordability piece work out? Really well, as it turns out. The independent research organization that I head— Student Monitor —conducts an annual survey that includes more than a thousand hour-long, one-on-one, on campus interviews with full time undergraduates attending 100 representative colleges and universities. In our most recent survey we found that there has been a 41% decline in student spending on course materials over the last 10 years. This dramatic shift is largely driven by the digitization of course materials, many of which are provided through programs like Inclusive Access.
And we aren’t the only ones to show this trend. Student Watch, another campus research group, has shown an even greater decline of 57% in student spending on course materials over the last decade. The College Board puts the total annual spend on books and supplies at just $310 a year in its latest report on Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid, making the category a rare bright spot in higher ed affordability.
In terms of student outcomes, the current rules helped create a mechanism for colleges and universities to purchase course materials on a mass scale, which means that they can deliver those materials to students on or before the first day of class. Why do that? Because getting course materials early – rather than waiting days or weeks – correlates to better outcomes.
So did student outcomes improve? Yes, they certainly did.
Academic researcher Dr. Michael Moore from the University of New Hampshire has shown that these programs deliver on their academic promise, with a particularly significant impact on completion and success rates for underrepresented populations. Among students who identify as Black, for example, research has shown a success-rate increase of 13% for Inclusive Access participants, while Equitable Access participants had a 15.58% higher course completion rate than those who opted out.
For their part, the Department of Education has said that it is basing the proposed rule changes on a desire to increase consumer choice. They want to replace the current system of letting schools order materials in advance for an entire class, which is known as ‘opt out,’ with one in which students order materials on a one-by-one basis, or ‘opt in.’
The drawbacks of such a change should be obvious.
Number one, underserved students would not be able to purchase required course materials until after the disbursement of financial aid, which can take a week or more. That would mean that those students would miss out on the advantages of day-one access described above.
Number two, the current ‘opt-out’ system allows schools to process a single transaction for an entire class at one time. With an ‘opt-in’ system, however, those same institutions would have to process hundreds, or even thousands, of transactions, each semester. That would mean increased costs for schools. Such a system would also eliminate the economies of scale that the current system of bulk purchase delivers, and that would mean an increase in what students would have to pay publishers for the course materials. The combination of these two factors would send prices skyrocketing, swiftly wiping out the historic gains that have been made in course material affordability over the past decade.
It is painfully obvious that eliminating an option that helps students learn and save money does nothing to increase consumer choice. And while, as I have said, politics is hardly my focus or calling, it is mystifying that the department would choose to make such a move during a year in which college affordability is a central issue in the upcoming presidential election. In short, it seems as if no one is doing the math – either literal or figurative – on this one.
What is crystal clear, however, is that the Department of Education – and the current administration – should pause and take a good hard look at the data before striking the highly effective rules and regulations that have made these remarkable programs possible.
Eric Weil is the Managing Partner of STUDENT MONITOR LLC, the syndicated market research study of the U.S. and international college student market. Eric has been active in the college market for over thirty years as the publisher of the College Marketing Annual and Collegiate Trends.