Background

Students in higher education face many cost-of-living pressures and financial challenges. The 2024 Australian Universities Accord: Final Report revealed that financial barriers and study costs are hindering many Australians from starting or continuing their education. These findings are supported by an earlier NCSEHE study that found “students make strategic choices about when and what [textbooks] to buy and borrow”. Not purchasing or having access to prescribed textbooks has implications for teaching staff and student success and retention. For this reason, a growing number of Australian universities are working to alleviate student textbook costs.

Making a difference at JCU

A JCU strategic priority is transformative education, with an aim of widening participation in higher education for regional, remote, Indigenous, first-in-family and international students. Financial pressures are a key challenge for these students. While many student costs are beyond the control of JCU staff, prescribed textbook costs could be reduced by employing a range of strategies.

To address this issue, JCU Library has launched a Textbook Affordability Project (2024-2025) where Library staff invite collaboration with first-year core subject stakeholders to investigate if free-for-students alternatives can be identified. Options include:

• Subject Reading lists: curated lists of Library paid resources (e.g., ebook chapters, scanned hardcopy chapters, journal articles) and high-quality materials beyond our collections
• Open Educational Resources (OERs): adopt/use, adapt or create high-quality openly licenced etextbooks
• Library subscribed etextbooks: preferably etextbooks with unlimited user licences (dependent on favourable publisher licence conditions). See also JCU Library Prescribed and Recommended Textbook Guidelines.

Connect with JCU Library to participate or share a JCU story relevant to this transformative project.

How to identify zero cost to students flexibly-licenced etextbooks

Want to identify free-to-students prescribed etextbook replacements yourself?

• Explore JCU Library’s Open Education Resources Discovery Collection for books available for adoption/use at JCU, curated by our JCU Librarians for your convenience.
• Search JCU Library collections for flexibly-licenced etextbooks.