Below you will find a link to the VCCS Bookstore Operations Request for Proposals. This RFP was developed in response to the findings of the VCCS’s Textbook Costs and Digital Learning Workgroup. For the past two years, I have co-chaired, along withe Dr. Mark Estepp, President of Southwest Virginia Community College, this workgroup. While the TCDLR group’s work is still ongoing with its final report scheduled to be released this summer, one of its early findings was not only how much a college’s bookstore contract dramatically influences textbook prices–something that was well-known–but also that the terms of the contracts of various VCCS colleges were wildly disparate. We also discovered that of our 23 colleges, 9-10 had contracts expiring within the next several years.
As a result, Virginia Western Community College, the college with the bookstore contract expiring the soonest, lead the development of this RFP that is not only a systemwide agreement that all colleges can use, but include requirements for the support of OER as well as a reduction in the percentage of commission colleges receive from book sales. A total of 12-13 colleges have indicated they will sign on once their current contracts expire, making it pretty darn close to a systemwide bookstore contract.
Feel free to download and reuse the contract.
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