The Bison Book Bundle, which offers students with all of their needed course material for a semesterly fee of $375 per semester, is kicking off for the first time with this fall semester.
The Bundle came from a partnership with Barnes and Noble. Students are automatically opted in to the Bundle, and were sent an email in July allowing them to verify which materials were necessary for their courses. At the end of the semester, students will be required to return all of the course materials they picked up from the bundle.
Tyler Yurek, sophomore Cinema Production major, said he chose to opt into the Bundle.
“I surprisingly had a lot more books than I thought I would this year, “ Yurek said. “It ended up being worth it, it paid for itself so I decided to opt into it.”
The Bundle also provides students with a 35-50% discount, according to their website.
It does not cover things, “that cannot be returned and reused.” Examples of this include lab goggles, dissection kits, and engineering kits.
Marlin Collingwood, vice president of enrollment, said the university has seen a number of students come through to check out books provided by the bundle.
“Some of the courses that are popular for the bundle are courses like Chem books for this course alone can easily hit over $600 if all the items are purchased new,” said Collingwood.
“Even when renting used copies, this course and its lab would still be over $400 in materials.”
According to the Education Data Initiative, a research team analyzing the costs of U.S. education, the average undergraduate student pays between $339 and $600 for books annually.
20% of students failed classes because they could not afford the course material, according to the Initiative.
Students can choose to opt-out of the bundle, taking the fee off their tuition statement.
Jessica Carmona, sophomore musical theater major said she chose to opt out of the Bundle.
“I opted out because my major doesn’t use a lot of books to begin with,” Carmona said. “Also, tuition increased by like $3000 this year, and as someone who struggles to pay tuition I just don’t need it and I think it’s excessive.”
Peyton Collins, a sophomore musical theater major, also opted out of the bundle.
“I opted out kinda for similar reasons, basically it’s just a lot more money than you need to spend on books,” said Collins. “I don’t use them very much and there’s often an online copy off amazon for cheaper.”
According to Collingwood, 52% of all students participated in the first semester of the Bison Book Bundle, with the other 48% opting out.
In an interview by email, Collingwood said, “We believe that students had all the information they needed to decide if they wanted to opt into the program.”
“We are pleased with this participation level as this program is brand new,” Collingwood said. “We anticipate that this participation number will increase as the program continues.”
The opt-out window closes on September 4th.
Any questions about the Bundle can be emailed to the programs manager at [email protected] or by calling 412-392-3448.
