One of the key higher-education affordability campaigns we run on our campus is on textbook affordability. Textbooks are one of the biggest out-of-pocket students will face. And now, publishers are pushing more professors to assign access codes, where students have to pay to submit homework.
The Student PIRGs just released a report about how the pandemic hurt students’ ability to get these required course materials. It shows that nearly a quarter of students could not even afford to do their homework. That statistic gets worse if students encounter financial struggles in the pandemic.
Some solutions to this are for professors to either show the textbooks or codes that are needed in order to complete the course prior to registering for the class, or pushing toward open textbooks.
Textbooks should not be such a burden to students. No student should have to choose between buying food or buying a textbook.
Brianna Muller
Taunton
Freshman, Management Major, UMass Boston
This letter to the editor was originally published in the Taunton Daily Gazette and can be found here.