McGraw-Hill Leading the Way to Make High-Quality Learning Materials More Affordable for U.S. College Students

August 8th, 2018 (NEW YORK, N.Y.) – McGraw-Hill announced today that it has reached several new milestones in its expanded "Affordability & Outcomes" program, aimed at improving student savings and driving better learning outcomes. The company now covers nearly the entire marketplace with its textbook and eBook rental program with the addition of six distribution partners. In addition, McGraw-Hill continued to rapidly grow instructor and student use of its digital solutions and expanded its first-day-of-class Inclusive Access program to a total of more than 550 college campuses nationwide.

Rental Program: McGraw-Hill has finalized new rental agreements with the following six providers: Amazon, indiCo, Nebraska Book Company, eCampus.com, Ambassador and Tree of Life. They join existing partners Follett, Chegg, Inc. and Barnes & Noble Education and its Barnes & Noble College and MBS Textbook Exchange subsidiaries. The program covers more than 200 copyright 2019 titles and all future titles, with materials available to students for as low as $40 and up to 70 percent off the cost of purchasing traditional textbooks. Students can access McGraw-Hill’s rental program at their local bookstores, through online retailers or directly through the company’s website, www.mheducation.com.

Digital Growth: The company has continued to make inroads with its industry-leading digital platforms: McGraw-Hill Connect® and ALEKS®. The number of U.S. student activations of Connect so far in 2018 has increased 9 percent compared to this time last year. Growth in Connect usage this year has been driven in part by innovative new capabilities such as ConnectMaster®, a digital-first learning experience that improves student engagement and success through experiential learning, simulations and relevant skill practice in areas ranging from Biology to Economics and other disciplines. In Math and Chemistry, the number of students using ALEKS has expanded by 10 percent in higher education year-over-year, fueled by its ability to diagnose student strengths and weaknesses and provide them a personalized learning path.

Inclusive Access Coverage: Since last year, McGraw-Hill has more than doubled the number of campuses it reaches through its inclusive access programs – up to 550 campuses – with a number of new agreements with partner organizations that enable students to have more affordable digital course materials automatically delivered to them on the first day of class, or earlier. Under this model, student costs are typically 30-40 percent less than the price of traditional digital materials and at a fraction of the cost of purchasing traditional textbooks. With the company’s newest partners, including RedShelf, VitalSource, Barnes & Noble Education, Follett and the Unizin consortium, McGraw-Hill is now able to offer this affordable, convenient option to nearly three out of every four U.S. college students for at least one of their courses.

Click here for case studies on how Connect, ALEKS and Inclusive Access are delivering savings and improving student outcomes at institutions such as Clemson University, Ozark Technical College, University of Tennessee, Washington State University, Northern Kentucky University and the University of Missouri system.

"Our affordability initiative is based on a few simple tenets," said Bill Okun, president, U.S. Higher Education for McGraw-Hill. "First, listen closely to our customers – both students and instructors. Second, offer affordable, engaging products that optimize choice and preserve academic freedom because there is no one solution that addresses all instructor and student needs. And, third, focus on total value and outcomes, not just lowest cost. That means providing great service to instructors and students to make it easy for them to implement and use the right solution. It also means ensuring that we never take our eyes off student success as our North Star."

In addition to the rental, digital and inclusive access components of its affordability initiative, McGraw-Hill has further improved the accessibility of its learning materials as it moves to ensure all new content and solutions meet WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines.