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S. 740 119th Congress Senate

Affordable College Textbook Act

Official title: A bill to expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students and improve textbook price information.

Introduced: February 26, 2025 Introduced by: Richard J. Durbin Democratic · Illinois See on congress.gov
Education Books and print mediaCongressional oversightDigital mediaEducation programs funding
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Government studies and investigationsHigher educationTeaching, teachers, curricula
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 Everywhere this bill has been 2 steps
Introduced
In committee
Reported out
Passed House
Passed Senate
To President
Became law
Feb 26, 2025
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. (text: CR S1398-1399)
Feb 26, 2025
Introduced in Senate
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What's happening now February 26, 2025

Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. (text: CR S1398-1399)

 Plain-English summary Congressional Research Service

Affordable College Textbook Act

This bill provides statutory authority for an open textbook grant program for institutions of higher education (IHEs). (A similar program, known as the Open Textbooks Pilot program, first received federal funding in FY2018.)

Specifically, the bill directs the Department of Education to make grants to IHEs or states on behalf of IHEs to support projects that expand the use of open textbooks. An open textbook is an educational resource that either resides in the public domain or has been released under an intellectual license that permits its free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others.

Within three years of the bill's enactment, the Government Accountability Office must report to Congress on the cost of textbooks at IHEs. This report must examine, among other topics, the factors that have contributed to the change in the cost of textbooks.

 Related & companion bills 1
  • HR 1886 Identical bill Affordable College Textbook Act
 Bill text 1 version

Source documents hosted by congress.gov.

 Committees of jurisdiction 1
 Lobbying activity 16

Registered lobbyists who named this bill in their disclosure filings. Source: federal Lobbying Disclosure Act filings.

Bodies those filers lobbied

A filing lists the bills it worked on and the parts of government it contacted in separate sections, so these are the bodies those filers named anywhere in the filing, not a per-bill breakdown.

See all 16 filings →
 Cosponsors 3
All 3 Democratic 2 Independent 1
I
King, Angus S., Jr.
Maine · Feb 26, 2025
 D
Smith, Tina
Minnesota · Feb 26, 2025
 D
Wyden, Ron
Oregon · Feb 26, 2025
Cite this page click to expand
APA
U.S. Congress. (2026). S. 740: Affordable College Textbook Act. 119th Congress. Open America. https://openamerica.io/bill/119-S-740/
MLA
"S. 740: Affordable College Textbook Act." 119th Congress, 2026, Open America, https://openamerica.io/bill/119-S-740/.
Bluebook (legal)
S. 740, 119th Cong. (2026), https://openamerica.io/bill/119-S-740/.
Markdown link
[S. 740: Affordable College Textbook Act](https://openamerica.io/bill/119-S-740/)
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