Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. Sees Explosive Demand for BNC First Day® Complete, Its Equitable Access Course Material Delivery Model
September 02, 2021 at 07:55 am EDT
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Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. announced the rapid expansion of its innovative course material delivery model BNC First Day® Complete with a significant increase in the number of campuses across the country using the program. In the 2021 fall term, First Day Complete will be offered through 65 campus bookstores up from just 12 campus bookstores in the fall of 2020, representing over 300,000 in total undergraduate enrollment, up from 43,000 students last fall - a 7x year-over-year increase. With this increase, the program will now be available across a broad spectrum of schools from small private colleges to large public universities and multi-campus community college systems. Disrupting the Traditional Course Material Delivery Model: First Day Complete is disrupting the traditional course material delivery model in collaboration with leading institutions from across the country. By delivering all course materials via one unified service, the program ensures students have access to all their learning materials across all of their courses before the first day of class, allowing them to engage with course content from day one to support their academic success. Course material costs are bundled into tuition or applied as a course charge for one flat-rate each semester and through a concierge-style service, students can pick up all their physical materials either at the bookstore or have them shipped, while digital materials are accessible through an institution’s learning management system (LMS). The program offers full academic freedom for faculty, allowing them to select the best course materials for the term from BNED’s expansive relationship with more than 6,000 publishers, creating a one-stop, simplified experience. Data show that course materials are still an optional purchase for many students even though it’s been well documented that students who have their course materials before the start of class perform better academically. First Day Complete helps to remove barriers and provides the same fundamental level of access across an entire institution for all students.
Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. is a contract operator of physical and virtual bookstores for college and university campuses and K-12 institutions across the United States. The Company is also a textbook wholesaler, inventory management hardware and software provider, and a provider of digital education solutions. The Company's segments include Retail and Wholesale. The Retail Segment operates 1,366 college, university, and K-12 school bookstores, comprised of 774 physical bookstores and 592 virtual bookstores. The Wholesale Segment centrally sources, sells, and distributes new and used textbooks to approximately 3,000 physical bookstores, including its Retail segment's 774 physical bookstores and sources, and distributes new and used textbooks to its 592 virtual bookstores. Additionally, the Wholesale Segment sells hardware and a software suite of applications that provides inventory management and point-of-sale solutions to approximately 340 college bookstores.