Edfinity Issues a Challenge to Higher Education Institutions and Educators: Make STEM Courseware More Affordable for Students

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Edfinity, an innovative, collaborative online homework platform for collegiate STEM courses that unbundles expensive publisher packages of textbooks and homework platforms, today issues a challenge to higher education: Prioritize affordability for students when selecting course materials. By offering a special "Robin Hood'' pricing for access to its platform, Edfinity aims to democratize access to quality online homework by breaking the expensive bundling model favored by textbook publishers.

"College students today are essentially captive customers who must purchase access to courseware and platforms mandated by their professors," said Shivram Venkatasubramaniam, co-founder and CEO of Edfinity. "As a National Science Foundation-funded effort, we're focused on meeting the singularly important need for instruction in STEM courses – a perpetual supply of high quality, peer-reviewed problems for any course – without expensive baggage such as a proprietary, expensive textbook. Educators shouldn't have to adopt a publisher textbook just to get access to a homework system – this is superfluous bundling at its worst – and students should have affordable alternatives to these increasingly expensive publisher bundles."

The cost of textbooks and online homework has long been a source of frustration for students:

• Between 1977 and 2015, textbook prices have increased by 1,041% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• College students spend $1,200-$1,300/year, on average, on textbooks – a cost that is as much as 40% of tuition at a two-year community college and 13% at a four-year public institution (The College Board)
• In 2020, 65% of students reported not purchasing a textbook because of its high price (U.S. PIRG Education Fund)
• 50% of college students said their grades suffered when they did not buy textbooks because of their high prices (VitalSources)

As an open-ended offer, Edfinity seeks to level the playing field by enabling student access to quality online homework with exceptional support for as little as $2.99/student/term for two-year institutions and $5.99/student/term for four-year institutions. Following a sliding scale, the company's lowest price is contingent on the scale of Edfinity adoption and a clear demonstration of commitment to student affordability by an institution.

"Our 'Robin Hood'-style pricing algorithm – which helps us pursue differentiated pricing and provides the largest subsidy to the institutions most committed to student savings – empowers all educators and institutions to make big strides in reducing student spending on textbooks and homework systems," said Venkatasubramaniam. "While we seek to help all institutions, we'd like to direct our most vigorous efforts and subsidies to educators who demonstrate the greatest commitment to student interests by migrating from expensive publisher bundles."

The Edfinity platform provides feature parity and more with expensive publisher platforms for a fraction of the cost and without mandated bundling of proprietary textbooks. Free to educators, Edfinity offers ready-to-use homework mapped to more than 300 textbooks, and hundreds of thousands of interactive, algorithmic homework problems that can be mapped to any commercial or Open Educational Resources (OER) textbook or paired with any curriculum.

"At our lowest price point, an institution could save every student thousands of dollars in the course of their journey through college," said Venkatasubramaniam. "Any institution deeply committed to student savings and better learning outcomes should seize this moment, as more than 350 institutions already have with Edfinity."

Edfinity Fast Facts

• Edfinity is a National Science Foundation-supported, fully adaptive homework system in use at 350+ institutions, for the entire math curriculum from Developmental Math to Multivariable Calculus and beyond
• Edfinity supports personalized adaptive learning for all courses, corequisite course structures, and can be paired with any commercial or OER textbook
• Edfinity uses a widely used, open-source problem format to ensure easy migration into and out of Edfinity for all educators
• Migration to Edfinity from any other platform is easy
• Educator access is free; student access costs as low as $2.99/term/student for 2-year institutions and $5.99/term/student for 4-year institutions, depending on the scale of adoption and the institution's commitment to affordability
• The Edfinity catalog provides over 250 ready-to-go courses that are mapped to publisher and OER textbooks: https://edfinity.com/catalog

For more information about Edfinity and its pricing offer, go to edfinity.co/pricing.

About Edfinity
Edfinity is an innovative, collaborative online homework and assessment platform for collegiate STEM courses. Unbundling expensive publisher packages of textbooks and homework platforms, Edfinity empowers educators with ready-to-use homework mapped to more than 300 textbooks as well as hundreds of thousands of interactive, algorithmic homework problems that can be mapped to any commercial or Open Educational Resources (OER) textbook or paired with any curriculum. Architected with an open-source problem format, Edfinity features intuitive authoring tools for educators to create, curate and crowdsource richly interactive problems for greater student engagement. Free to educators, student access to Edfinity costs less than a cup of coffee per month. Privately owned and based in Austin, Texas, Edfinity grew out of the educator community in 2017 and today is trusted by more than 350 institutions. Edfinity is supported by the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants for cutting-edge, advanced technological innovation in commercially viable applications. For more information, visit https://edfinity.com/ or reach out to [email protected].

Media Contact

Michael Tebo, Gabriel Marketing Group (for Edfinity), 571-835-8775, [email protected]

SOURCE Edfinity