Albany Technical College’s has moved forward with reducing the cost of books for students through several initiatives. Dr. Anthony Parker and senior staff started discussing options this summer on how to reduce the cost of books and in turn passing that cost savings on to the student. Plans are now in place for the fall semester 2018 to start this savings with further reductions in all programs by the end of the school year.

In an effort to lower the costs for students across the board in a variety of programs offered at the college, Albany Technical College will begin offering the option of: 1)loose leaf versions of books when available 2) e-books 3) OER Open Education Resource 4)some programs will begin using an online service called Cengage Unlimited which will give the students their course plus other options at their fingertips. Multi-term subscriptions will also be available for the programs that are using ATC Cengage Unlimited.

Albany Technical College has been aware of the expense of books for many years now. For the past 12 years ATC has lowered the cost by offering a 20% markup but not to exceed $20.00 flat fee. This has been done in efforts to minimize the price passed on to the students.

According to CBS News, the average cost of college textbooks has risen four times faster than the rate of inflation over the past 10 years. That has caused 65 percent of students to skip buying required texts at some point in their college career because of a lack of affordability. Notably, a movement is growing to provide copyright-free open-access text books. But these programs have been adopted at only 6 percent of schools.

Albany Technical College is located in the Second Congressional District of Georgia. It is the eighth poorest Congressional District in the United States. Despite serving one of the poorest congressional districts in the nation, ATC ranks in the 90th percentile in producing unduplicated graduates and in the 100th percentile producing diploma graduates among TCSG colleges. ATC has an obligation to be the engine for change in the lives of their students, and making books affordable is one of the many methods being used to develop an employable workforce.