College students don’t want to buy textbooks. 

The data backs it up, showing that the cost of learning materials affects how over half of college students pick their courses. If you’re already paying thousands of dollars for tuition – plus living expenses – per term, do you really want to drop an extra few hundred dollars on textbooks? 

Go to just about any classroom on the first day of the term. No one has bought the textbook yet; students are waiting for confirmation that they absolutely have to make the purchase.