The USC administration announced their new Digital Course Materials Program. It will automatically register students into a program where they will pay $292, for the semester, to access textbooks across all their classes. Students can also choose to opt out and purchase their books individually.
The USC Bookstore says that the new program will bring textbook costs down by 60% but Alex Brooker, a senior in human biology, is concerned that the new policy isn’t fully up front.
“I would be interested to see a cost breakdown, I don’t know how transparent USC can be about costs sometimes, but I would be interested to see a cost breakdown based on whether or not it would actually benefit students,” said Brooker.
Many students don’t buy textbooks at all, which means the 60% decrease won’t impact them. Mika Ishimaru, a third-year sociology major at USC, hunts down free texts instead of going to the bookstore.
“I get it [being] online, if there’s anyone who sends a PDF format of it, I think the only time I bought [a] textbook once was this semester, I could not find it online, so I only bought it once. It was only $15,” said Ishimaru.
Chris Belcher, a USC professor of gender and sexuality studies, doesn’t assign anything her students can’t access through the library for free.
“I teach a lot of book chapters and books that are already available through the USC Libraries, that are very easy to just create the PDF and distribute to students. That way, you guys are already paying tuition and fees that cover our vast resources in the libraries, and so that is typically what I assign,” said Belcher.
Her own college experience shaped her textbook policy.
“I also had a scholarship that covered my books. And when I was in college, it would have been really difficult for me to shoulder that burden. I try to be very conscious about what I assign,” said Belcher.
But she also acknowledged that teaching in the humanities makes this easier for her to do.
Brooker explains that while he’s forced to buy texts for his stem major, many of them stay untouched.
“Every year it’s a couple $100, I know specifically for this year, I bought three or four textbooks that I’m just not using at all. and [they] are technically recommended or technically essential, but not really essential for the course. I mean, everybody I feel like, knows it’s like, you kind of just buy the textbook because you need to, but it doesn’t, doesn’t really get used,” said Brooker.
Another STEM student, Manek Badel, a mechanical engineering grad student, repeated that while he needs textbooks, he often gets them from the library, and likely wouldn’t opt for USC’s new policy.
“I wouldn’t take that, because $300 is a high amount for international students. And pretty much, like, a student might not, I might not take it,” said Badel.
Belcher hopes that USC makes it clear to students like Badel, who want to opt out, how that is done.
“I hope that people are aware of the fee and opt out of it, if they need to, because that’s always a tricky thing, like when a fee is added and it’s like, well, you have to opt out of this, as opposed to opt in. I just hope that people get the information, especially the incoming class,” said Belcher.
According to a letter sent out by Provost Guzman, students can opt out of the program for any reason up until the add/drop date for the semester. Students who have no required materials for their classes will automatically be opted out. For more information on the policy, go the USC Bookstore website.