Students at Texas A&M can save money on course materials with the Cengage Unlimited subscription.
With Cengage Unlimited, students have the option of choosing three different subscriptions: four months (one semester) for $119.99, one year for $179.99 and a two-year subscription for $239.99.
Cengage created the concept of Cengage Unlimited in 2017, and the subscription officially launched in August 2018. Director of public and media relations Kristina Massari said they created the subscription so that it was more focused on what the students’ needs might be — which at the time was affordability.
“There’s a crisis in affordability in higher [education] today and … very few people are actually doing something about it,” Massari said. “I think Cengage is really one of the few companies out there that are taking the affordability issue seriously.”
With the subscription, students get a variety of online or physical textbooks as well as other materials in Cengage’s library that has over 22,000 materials available. Students also get access to the online college and career success center and study tools.
“Because it’s a model designed for students, we know that you have the learning needs that are in-between your courses or maybe not covered by your courses,” Costantini said.
The Cengage Unlimited subscription also offers free seven month trials with companies like Evernote, Dashlane, Chegg and Quizlet.
“This is like an open ecosystem,” Costantini said. “It’s not just about what Cengage provides. We are partnering with other companies that provide products and services that students want today.”
While students should look for the best price for their materials, Regional Manager Joanna Koliba of the on-campus Barnes & Noble said that the bookstore carries some titles that other sources, such as book stores or websites, might not have available.
“Faculty will work with publishers to use custom materials that are printed and produced just for the course on this campus,” Koliba said. “Many times [with] those custom titles, we are the only source for those.”
Koliba said students should be able to choose how they get their school supplies based on how they want to learn, whether that be through an ebook or a physical copy of a textbook.
“It’s important that each student make the purchase in the format that’s best for them,” Koliba said.
With over a million subscribed to Cengage Unlimited in the first year of being available, Massarri said she encourages students to look at what Cengage Unlimited could potentially offer them when it comes to saving money.
“Students who are thinking about Cengage Unlimited can go to our website, and there’s a saving calculator there so they can input their ISBN to see how much they would save,” Massari said.
Cengage Unlimited vice president Cheryl Costantini said Cengage noticed that the price for course materials increased, which could be an issue for some students.
“We knew that we needed to do something about that because if students didn’t have access to course materials, it wasn’t going to help them succeed in their courses, so that’s why we launched Cengage Unlimited,” Costantini said.