Expensive and inequitable for students, costs for virtual books are being added to fee statements without students’ consent.

 

Some George Brown College (GBC) students have paid more than $1,000 for e-textbooks they cannot keep beyond the semester.

While textbooks can be an essential part of classroom learning, these overpriced e-texts being made mandatory without even an option to choose a physical substitute has become a rising concern.

Angie Nijmeh, director of education and equity at the Student Association (SA), faced a similar issue in her program this year. Every student in her class was charged excessively for textbooks whose physical copies could be obtained at much cheaper prices.

“This is a problem across faculties at George Brown College where students are being charged for these e-texts without their consent. It’s being listed in the tuition breakdown, and most students don’t even know about it,” Nijmeh said.

The concern was brought to the notice of SA’s Academic support, and they conducted a survey among students. Preliminary analysis shows more than 50 per cent of respondents prefer physical textbooks over e-texts.

Kinjal Prashant Shah, an international student at GBC’s business school said, “Most of our assignments and exams are not even completely based on the e-text. Professors give us presentation slides; I don’t think in the past six months have I even opened these books.”

Shah was one who was charged prices reaching $1,000 for e-texts that are not regularly used in her classes.

Many of these e-texts are licensed for a short period of time. “We get access only for as long as this particular course lasts,” said Ananya Golla, a student at the Fashion school.

Rhiema Shuster, coordinator of Academic Support, is aware that the students are paying full retail value for textbooks they can only access for a few months.

Shuster’s concern starts with students’ ownership of these texts and is an area Academic Support will push on to ensure fairness.

Meanwhile, having spent two years learning from screens, many students wish to access physical resources now that they are back on campus. Accessibility needs are also a huge factor for many others. This means that the inability to opt for physical textbooks has left all these students frustrated.

A source who wished to remain anonymous shared concerns over the situation as they have experienced many issues with regards to textbooks.

“I have a liaison with the school because I’m on disability, she was not able to access my textbook. So, for a full year, even though I wanted to access – with my money – the text in a certain way, I was told, ‘no, we don’t do that anymore. Your textbook is like this’,” they said. “It was just everybody was telling me to speak to somebody else.”

It was only when they brought their accessibility manager that the college finally ordered the physical texts. However, the student still hasn’t received the textbooks, 13 weeks into the semester.

The source added that they might know why the college stopped providing students an option for physical textbooks.

“I know someone who works at the bookstore. He showed me two memos saying that they are not opening the Casa Loma campus bookstore because it costs too much money to run it, to get students real textbooks. They [the college] made so much money off of having textbooks online during COVID. That it’s not even an option to go back to selling real textbooks,” they said.

Nijmeh stressed on the importance of students being given the opportunity to choose what materials they pay for, and what mode they want the materials to be in.

“A part of equity is giving students the freedom to choose,” she said.

Certain students like Golla also faced an additional issue of being asked to buy e-texts not listed on their course fee. While the survey conducted by Academic Support does not cover this aspect of the e-text issue, the incident is in violation of the college’s Academic Policy (A006).

As per clause 3.2 in the academic policy, students must be provided a non-fee assessment alternative if assessments are taken from digital sources not included in the students’ course fees.

Golla says this is not the case in her program.

“We were asked to purchase a textbook but the one that we purchased was the older version and it was not updated. I had to repurchase the textbook because we have online assignments through the text. So basically, I still haven’t gotten a refund for that.”

Refunds, in any case, are unheard of by students even after this issue has come to mostly everyone’s notice in the college. Nijmeh was able to process cancellation of e-text charges for her program if students had not paid the fees yet. But the college did not return the money for students who had already paid.

“People who paid, unfortunately didn’t get back their amount, what they paid just got carried over to pay for their next semester,” Nijmeh clarified.

This would not benefit students like Shah who have already paid and will finish their program at GBC this semester.

Students report having received no response or help from their schools. Professors who teach the classes using these e-texts are unable to answer questions and guide students to managers who do not respond.

“We have bills to pay, assignments, part time jobs, and I feel on top of that, if we must go and fight with college for these issues people won’t be able to accelerate their careers, because it’s like a very, very long process,” Shah said, having reached out to her school multiple times without a response.

Representatives from GBC would not comment on the concerns regarding the e-texts but provided a statement from Joe Cressy, senior vice president for external relations.

“The issue of mandatory e-textbook fees was recently brought to the attention of our college team. Upon receiving this information, we launched a review of the practice with the objective of creating a new approach that reduces the financial burden on our students and is guided by our overarching commitment to equity. Working with the Vice President Academic, we aim to complete this review before the end of the year and will provide a full update on the approach going forward at that time,” read Cressy’s statement.

Meanwhile SA’s Academic Support will draft its recommendations based off the survey results and take it to the SA board of directors.

Shuster adds that GBC’s Accessible Learning Policy intends to moving towards a more digital future, however, they need to be mindful that not everyone finds non-physical textbooks accessible.

“We know specifically on the topic of textbooks that some students need that accessibility flexibility to go the other way and to go back to hardcopy.”

Nijmeh hopes the Academic Support recommendations become policy and that students are not charged for e-textbooks without their consent.

She suggests that students pay close attention to their tuition fee breakdown for upcoming terms and immediately contact the chair of their department if they notice they are being charged excessively for e-textbooks.

Students may also get in touch with board members if they require help connecting with the right points of contact.

For now, all students can do is wait for the SA to take the recommendations to the college or for the college to make these changes themselves without prompt.

At this point, the hope of everyone involved is that students are given the equitable choice to decide whether they are able to pay for all their textbooks and how they want to access them.