UWM’s Affordable Textbook Initiative Cuts Costs for Students

Many textbooks can cost upwards of $200. Wohnai (CC-BY)

When college students return to campus this month, the cost of tuition isn’t their only worry – high-priced course materials and textbooks can be a financial burden.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is trying to make textbooks more accessible through the Open Textbooks and Open Educational Resources project which eliminates the cost of some textbooks and course materials for students.

The project includes a free online database for students to access course materials.

Kristin Woodward, the teaching and learning team lead at UWM Libraries, said the university launched the program in 2015 because high costs were driving students to avoid purchasing textbooks, making it tougher for them to succeed in class. UW Stout also launched the program the same year. The program has since spread to other state universities.

Woodward said students often delayed buying textbooks until later into the semester instead of buying them in the beginning.

“They would come to the library and say, ‘Could you help me get this book?’ And if we looked at the calendar, it wasn’t September 1. It was October 15 or November 15 or even exam time,” she said.

Some didn’t buy their textbooks at all.

“About half of students don’t purchase the book for a course,” she said. “If the course is assessing students on their knowledge of the material, then half the students don’t have that material.”

A 2023 national survey on student course material affordability by Bay View Analytics said seven in ten students worry about the costs of course materials. It also said 41 percent  of students received a poor grade in their class because they didn’t purchase a textbook. Additionally, 57 percent of students won’t take certain courses due to the cost of materials.

Woodward said although many students receive financial aid it’s often not enough to cover costs beyond tuition.

“There’s a big gap between what students need and what they actually get in financial aid,” Woodward said. “They’re making household and lifestyle decisions based on weighing groceries, weighing rent, all of those things.”

Heather Maggio is pursuing a masters degree in social work at UWM and will be a senator in the student government in the upcoming semester. They said students often find other loopholes to avoid paying for textbooks — sharing books or borrowing from other students.

Maggio said students often don’t know if they have to purchase textbooks until the syllabus is available on the first day of classes.

“The course materials not being decided upon or not being relayed to students can make the first week of classes a really big challenge,” they said. “Suddenly I see, ‘Oh, I have a book I have to buy, I didn’t budget for that, I didn’t realize, I didn’t plan for that.’”

UWM has said that the Open Textbook and OER model has been successful.

In the 2024-2025 school year alone, 28,534 students saved $1.7 million, according to the university. Since 2015, the project has helped over 43,100 students, saving them over $6 million.

Woodward said in an email that the project has been promoted by the Office of Student Success state-wide since 2024. She said the UW system administration identified the project as a strategic priority and offered stipends to faculty members to increase the awareness.

The majority of the available materials are for general education classes, which are often textbook based, Woodward said.

She said the Open Textbook and OER model is a solution to the high costs students are going to face in the back-to-school season.

“The open textbook model provides a solution that we can actually grab onto and say, we can engage with this and we can support it, and then that’s going to help students out,” Woodward said.

UW-Milwaukee’s affordable textbook initiative aims to make back-to-school expenses more manageable was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.