Textbook subscription lowers prices

Kristin Kovalsky, News Reporter

Textbook company, Cengage, has created the first and only online textbook subscription.

Cengage Unlimited is a textbook subscription that students can purchase for a single semester or the whole academic year. The price for a single semester is $120, and an entire year is $180.

College students are estimated to spend between $400 and $1,000 on textbooks and course materials for a semester, depending on their major. The goal of Cengage is to dramatically lower these costs for students.

Kristina Massari, director of public and media relations for Cengage Unlimited, said the program has been around for about two years.

Massari said the idea came because customers were making it clear that textbook prices were just too high.

Cengage has already helped students save money on textbooks.

“Last year students saved $60 million, and we expect they’re going to save another $100 million this academic year with using Cengage Unlimited,” Massari said.

The subscription offers more resources and services other than just the online edition of the textbook.

“Within the platform there’s a college success center, which has a lot of activities in terms of helping students with time management and goal setting, how to communicate with a professor if that’s new to the student,” Massari said. “There are also financial literacy resources which have been helpful. We also have a career center that helps students with resume building.”

In addition to those resources, Cengage Unlimited is partners with Quizlet, Chegg and Evernote. Through these partnerships, students have access to these resources for the length of their subscription.

Sophomore Anasia Phillips, psychology and Spanish major, said she used Cengage Unlimited for her applied precalc class.

“I used it with my applied precalc class, so we didn’t have to buy the textbook. We just went online, and [my professor] had all our homework assignments on there too, and [it] gave us extra tools to study and use. And for the math problems, we could do it more than once, and still get the points for it,” Phillips said.

The subscription has helped college students for the past year.

“I would definitely recommend it to other students and use it again myself,” Phillips said. “I didn’t actually know that you could use it for other classes. It’s very easy [to use] and you get so many resources.”