Beginning in fall 2025, Colorado State University Pueblo students will be automatically enrolled in Pack Ready, a new bookstore program costing $25 per credit hour. That means a student taking 15 credit hours will pay $375, a price tag that has drawn strong reactions from students and faculty.
All students are automatically opted into the new Pack Ready bookstore program. CSU Pueblo students will have around two weeks to opt out of the program each semester. All physical course materials are rented and need to be returned to the bookstore at the end of the semester. Students can buy the book at a discounted price at the end of the semester if needed. Lab goggles, dissection kits, molecular model kits, engineering kits, nursing kits, and other consumable course materials that cannot be returned and reused are not covered in the program.
Several faculty members decided to use the Open Education Resources project, meaning education resources such as textbooks, tests, booklets, etcetera are written by faculty. The classes that use OER will have free or low-cost books for their students. Due to the Pack Ready program agreement, the State of Colorado OER council stopped giving grants to the university.
“How is it affordable?” Alegria Ribadeneira said, author of open education resources and professor and chair, department of english and world languages. “If you are… charging students and preying on the fact that they may be under-informed, and overwhelmed, and overworked, and all those things.”
Gwen Young, director of campus services, stated her actions on how she has dealt with some of the new programs’ reactions.
“Half of them decided to opt out, but I had some that saved money by being in the Pack Ready program. So I saw examples where it helps and it doesn’t help some, but I only got a small handful of negative emails back then.” Young said.
Students are able to opt out of the program and still buy necessary textbooks at the bookstore. This led some faculty to petition in support of ethical course materials policies, which include permanently exempting OER and no-cost courses, placing a cap on price increases, limiting inflation, providing consistent and clear information, and sharing contact with shareholders.
Some scholarships, like the Kane and Reisher recipients, were informed to opt out of the program. The Department of Veterans Affairs has also informed all their veterans to opt out of this program. They do this as they have different regulations and already cover the cost of books under their program. According to scholarships and VA programs.
“There’s a lot of concern from our staff, also from the faculty, they had the concern, ‘you’re just gouging our students to pay for our debt.’ The problem is, even though it wasn’t part of the decision, I understand the decision… Over the past five years, the bookstore has incurred over $300,000 in deficit at the end of each year.” Young said. “That old bookstore model was not working, so we had to figure something out.”
