There is a noticeable shift in conversations happening in higher education right now. Creative ideas around recruiting and retaining students can help institutions stand out among the thousands of choices today’s students have in front of them. 

Students continue to struggle to afford the materials that are so critical to their success. The data from recent studies is confirming that there is a clear connection between access to course materials and student success.

On this month’s live webinar, Every Textbook on Day One: An Untapped Student Success Tool, a panel packed with industry experts discussed the transformative power of cost-saving textbooks and course material delivery programs, including Inclusive and Equitable Access. 

Every campus is unique, which is why your community deserves a flexible equitable access textbook program. Even though certain areas of Equitable Access offer uniformity where important, a one-size-fits-all solution is not always what your students, faculty, and staff need to succeed.

Across higher education, there is a rise in interest in Equitable Access, a program where students receive all of their required course materials (physical or digital) before the first day of class. 

They’re no strangers to new technology, which is why Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the four-year, private university in Western New York transitioned its bookstore online to the Akademos platform. The transition ensures a course material platform, driven by technology, is available to their nearly 16,000 students. The most popular disciplines for students at RIT are engineering, computer and information science, and engineering technologies. 

Oglala Lakota College introduced Inclusive Access courses through Akademos in the spring 2022 semester and continued through the fall 2022 semester. Inclusive Access is a digital course material delivery model where students are automatically granted access to their materials on or before the first day of class at a reduced price. Courses from the business, accounting, and economics departments are part of their Inclusive Access program, which reaches over 200 students each semester.