GW is considering implementing a flat-fee textbook program next academic year, stirring initial apprehension among faculty members.
Follett ACCESS would provide digital access to course materials, like textbooks, to students for $245 per semester, a University spokesperson said last week. Members of the Faculty Senate Educational Policy and Technology Committee expressed concerns about GW’s possible implementation of the program during its January committee meeting and the senate’s full February meeting, particularly regarding its student-facing costs, potential conflict with the library’s existing resources and the lack of an opt-out feature for professors.
University spokesperson Julia Garbitt said officials have made no final decision about whether the Follett ACCESS program will be carried out at GW because conversations are ongoing. She said the Follett ACCESS program imposes no restrictions on faculty as “all content” can be included and poses “no disruption” to professors’ course plans. The University would automatically enroll all students in the program by default, she said.
She said the course materials included within Follett ACCESS are not limited to just textbooks but also extend to “eBooks, courseware (access codes), physical textbooks and even course-related supplies/kits.”
“We welcome feedback and community input, and will continue to work with faculty to ensure their needs are met,” Garbitt said. “The University looks forward to continuing to provide high-quality academic resources for all students and faculty.”
More than 330 universities use Follett ACCESS, which would provide digital textbook access on the first day of class for a fixed fee per semester, charging students for course materials under tuition fees with an opt-out option, according to its website. Follett did not return a request for comment.
Students in the Follett ACCESS program at various schools have reduced the cost of their course materials by up to 80 percent, according to its website. The program aims to offer affordable access to textbooks and ensure that materials are available by the first day of class, its website states.
Of GW’s 12 peer schools, two — New York and Wake Forest universities — utilize the program.
During the Faculty Senate’s February meeting, Sarah Wagner, the co-chair of the senate’s EPT Committee and a professor of anthropology, said the committee believed the program would not be an appropriate fit for GW. She said the program “undermines” the libraries’ existing initiatives to deliver educational resources at no or reduced cost to students.
In response to the concerns, Dean of Libraries and Academic Innovation and Vice Provost for Libraries and Information Technology Geneva Henry said at the meeting that the program sounds like a “great idea.” She said that if GW implements the Follett ACCESS program, it would be held responsible under Department of Education guidelines to proactively inform students of their option to opt out.
“The Education Policy Committee was pretty clear that we didn’t think it was a good idea, and if that really was going to happen, we felt that the entire senate should be involved in that discussion,” Phil Wirtz, an EPT committee member and a professor of decision sciences and psychology, said at the meeting.
Katrin Schultheiss, an EPT Committee member and an associate professor of history, said the committee is not “dead set against” implementing the program, but Follett didn’t provide “satisfactory” answers to the questions that the committee posed. ACCESS Solutions for Follett Director Ann Barlow delivered a presentation proposing the program during the committee’s January meeting, according to David Rain, a committee member and an associate professor of geography and international affairs.
“We had a lot of questions and wanted to know more about it and have more time to discuss it before we decide whether we, as a committee, would recommend it going forward,” Schultheiss said.
Schultheiss said the senate’s EPT Committee had concerns that once the University adopts the program, Follett could “dramatically” increase its per-semester fee. The committee was also worried that the program would be in “competition” with the library’s existing efforts to address the high costs of course materials, she said.
GW’s libraries offer several initiatives to mitigate textbook costs, including the Top Textbooks program, where the libraries acquire up to three copies of expensive textbooks from high-enrollment undergraduate courses to loan out to students for three hours, according to the library’s website. The libraries also offer a number of resources to aid educators in finding “open and affordable materials,” including a grant award program for faculty that adopt open or zero-cost course materials, according to its website.
“They have been making great strides and take an enormous effort to try to make materials available to students for free, either through open source or through having materials available for students to borrow,” Schultheiss said.
She said the Follett ACCESS program would charge a flat fee for all of a student’s courses in a given semester, meaning that if a student were to opt out, they would not receive textbooks through Follett for any of their courses.
“You can’t pick and choose among your courses,” Schultheiss said. “However, they have to opt out every single semester. So it’s not like you do it once for your whole college career.”
Rain said the EPT Committee during its January meeting shared “strong feelings” and “pushback” in response to the program’s potential implementation, particularly raising concerns that students would be unaware of their option to opt out.
“The company needs to kind of go back and think about this a little bit more and figure out ways either to change that opt out system or to put a little more flexibility into that,” Rain said.
He said his reaction to the program was “a little bit negative” because there was no ability for faculty to opt-out of the program. Rain said in his own teaching he likes to be flexible and offer different course materials, like PDFs through the libraries and to students in between classes, which he thinks would be limited with the Follett program.
“For me personally, I would rather have the latitude to do what I want in the class, rather than sort of reporting to a private company that’s in charge of all this,” Rain said.
