As students at Miami University settle into the spring semester, it’s no secret that they are dreading the rising cost of college. While national headlines tend to focus on the rise in food and housing prices, there is a unique cost faced by college students alone: the price of textbooks.
Research from the Education Data Initiative shows that the average postsecondary student spends more than $1,200 on textbooks each year, with textbook prices rising at three times the rate of inflation.
In light of these challenges, the staff at the Student Library Service came together to help. Their initiative, a spinoff of last year's “cookies and course materials” program, offers consultations with librarians to help students access more affordable textbooks.
Students schedule a consultation during the first two weeks of school with one of the student success librarians, where they go through the resources and help answer any concerns they might have about the process.
“Students make an appointment, bring their syllabus and we just kind of go through and see what they need, and what we may have for free,” said Laura Birkenhauer, a student success librarian and founder of the program.
A typical consultation looks less like a library visit and more like an advising session. After going through the students’ needs, a librarian will look directly at the Brick and Ivy website to find copies of textbooks in the library, and keep a detailed spreadsheet so students can know what they have access to. Sometimes, the item they need is simply on the library shelves.
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“Students may have access to an ebook, a print textbook on reserve or something we can get through OhioLINK or an interlibrary loan,” Birkenhauer said.
Additionally, for students who are low-income, there are scholarships available through student financial aid and the student success center, although these are limited in number.
Birkenhauer said that the demand for help has grown steadily recently. While it is hard to tell how many people have shown up yet due to adverse weather conditions affecting the start of the semester, more than 50 people signed up for the program last year.
“Textbook costs have gone up almost 1,000% since the 1990s — they outpace inflation and even healthcare,” said Carla Myers, the leader of the library’s affordability catalyst working group, which works with administrators to lower costs in all aspects of the college experience.
This sharp rise in textbook costs is part of a much wider trend of financial strain experienced by college students, with prices of food, housing and medical care increasing by 3% or more in 2025 alone, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Textbooks may seem like a small part of a yearly budget, but for some students, these costs can add up.
“We have students who are working jobs to be able to afford their education,” Myers said, “some of whom don’t get grant funding until weeks into the semester.”
This is a problem – even though some students' financial aid covers textbooks, it often is applied retroactively, meaning they have to purchase course materials out-of-pocket before they can get reimbursed. However, there are additional services like student emergency contact forms and Miami Cares vouchers that can help students during financial crises.
“Students need their learning resources at the start, not weeks later,” Birkenhauer said.
Across campus, students say the price of textbooks shapes how they buy their course materials – if they even buy them at all.
“I spent almost $400 on textbooks last semester, and it really set me back,” Alec Martin, a first-year integrated social studies education major, said. “This semester, I didn’t buy any new books and decided I would try to borrow books or look for them online instead.”
Hayden Helfer, a fellow first-year integrated social studies education major, shared the same sentiment.
“I didn’t buy any textbooks yet, because most of my classes [last semester] didn’t even use most of the required materials,” Helfer said.
Myers also pointed out that a lot of the library's affordability initiatives centered around advocacy, with librarians reaching out to professors to convince them to use free textbooks available online, instead of commercial textbooks that can cost hundreds of dollars.
Above all, both librarians emphasized that students should never hesitate to ask for help.
“It’s never bothering us,” Birkenhauer said. “We’re here to help, whether it’s through this consultation program, online chat or the circulation desk.”
Myers said she understands the pressures students feel because she also lived through them at one point.
“I worked three jobs throughout college and still struggled to afford textbooks; it’s a cause that’s very near and dear to my heart,” Myers said.
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