Congress funds free textbooks to break $1,290-a-year student cost trap
S. 740 — Affordable College Textbook Act · Filed by Richard Durbin (D-IL) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 26, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill creates a federal grant program to help colleges adopt and create open-source textbooks—free educational materials that students can legally use, modify, and share. It also requires colleges to disclose textbook prices and whether materials are open-source on course schedules, and mandates that publishers disclose how they collect student data from digital textbooks. The goal is to reduce the $1,290 average annual textbook cost per student by expanding free alternatives.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a grant program to expand free textbooks plus mandatory price and data-use disclosure by colleges and publishers. Both provisions directly address student affordability and information asymmetry—the core stated purpose.
What the text implies
- Colleges must assist campus bookstores in obtaining course material information to 'source lower cost options'—this may shift purchasing power away from traditional textbook publishers toward open-source platforms and alternative vendors, indirectly pressuring legacy publishers' margins.
- The requirement that publishers disclose student data collection and opt-out terms in digital textbooks may expose previously opaque data-monetization practices, potentially reducing publisher revenue from data licensing if students opt out at scale.
- Grant recipients must release all newly created materials under perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive licenses—this creates a permanent public commons that competes with commercial textbooks indefinitely, even after federal funding ends.
- The bill's emphasis on 'highest enrollment courses' for open textbook creation targets the largest revenue-generating segments of the textbook market, potentially cannibalizing publisher sales in core subjects (calculus, biology, economics).
- Colleges receiving grants must report on 'savings generated for students, States, and the Federal Government'—this creates political pressure to demonstrate cost reductions, incentivizing aggressive adoption of open materials and potentially deprioritizing commercial alternatives regardless of pedagogical fit.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Students gain direct cost relief through expanded access to free textbooks and better price transparency, while faculty retain full academic freedom to choose materials. The bill imposes no new costs on students and creates accountability mechanisms (price disclosure, data-use transparency) that strengthen consumer information without restricting choice.
Who stands to gain
- open educational resource platforms and repositories
- institutions of higher education (grant recipients)
- faculty and instructional designers (professional development funding)
- students (direct cost savings)
Named in the bill
U.S. Department of Education, institutions of higher education, college bookstores, textbook publishers, open educational resource (OER) platforms, Government Accountability Office (GAO), Student PIRGs, Higher Education Act of 1965, Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 508)
Where it stands
3 cosponsors: 2 Democrats, 1 Independents.
- Feb 26, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 26, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. (text: CR S1398-1399)”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $60,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 6 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Richard Durbin, the sponsor, reported $-29,800 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Veterans Guardian Va Claim Consulting — $50,000 on 1 filing
- National Association of College Stores — $10,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (15,230 characters) on Aug 13, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress funds free textbooks to break $1,290-a-year student cost trap” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s740 Report an error
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