Course Materials - Cost Savings

The purpose of this policy is to give students more choices for purchasing educational materials and to encourage faculty and staff involved in assigning course materials to consider the least costly practices available.

Greener Store Responsibilities

The affiliated bookstore for The Evergreen State College is the “Greener Store”, formerly known as the Evergreen State College Book Store. The Greener Store’s responsibilities shall include:

• Provide students the option of purchasing materials that are unbundled when available from the publisher. When bundled materials present opportunities for cost savings, that information will be provided.
• Disclose to faculty, staff and students the retail costs of textbooks on a per-book and per course basis. Encourage timely submittal of the identifying information for textbooks that have been assigned by faculty and staff and publicly disclose that information when available.
• Disclose publicly, whenever available, how newer editions vary from previous editions.
• Actively promote and publicize book buy-back programs.
• Work closely with publishers to create bundles and packages whenever this creates a cost savings opportunity for students.

Disclose information to students on required course materials including but not limited to title, authors, edition, price, and International Standard Book Number (ISBN) at least four weeks before the start of the class for which the materials are required. The Provost may waive the disclosure requirement on a case-by-case basis, if students may reasonably expect that nearly all information regarding course materials is available four weeks before the start of the class for which the materials are required. The requirement provided in this subsection (1)(a)(iv) does not apply if the faculty member using the course materials is hired four weeks or less before the start of class.

Faculty and Staff Responsibilities

Faculty and staff who assign materials are required to consider the least costly options when educational content is comparable. They are also encouraged to work with the Greener Store as much as possible to facilitate the creation of bundles and packages if these present an opportunity of cost savings for the students.