Cerritos College and Pearson Higher Education share a partnership that will help students receive up to a 47 percent discount for textbooks for all social sciences courses. 

The partnership will help faculty upload quizzes and videos onto the TalonNet server without making students log into a different website.

The idea for the partnership began in 2009, when faculty members pitched the idea to Bryan Reece, dean of academic success and institutional effectiveness, to integrate the TalonNet server with the publishers.

Not only was the idea supposed to help faculty members upload quizzes and videos but it will also help faculty members keep one grade book.

“Most of that department used Pearson for its books. So I started to negotiate with Pearson Books,” Reece said.

As negotiations with the TalonNet server providers and Pearson book publishers merged, Reece’s negotiations took a step further.

“So before we pulled the trigger on the deal, I said, ‘Now if we do this, that means we are going to have more books sold through Pearson so maybe we can negotiate a discount,'”  Reece said.

Pearson agreed to drop an instant 35 percent discount for students, and if 60 to 70 percent of the faculty begins to use the server, then Pearson will increase its student discount by 8 percent.

In addition to the 43 percent discount, the student bookstore has agreed to give students an additional 4 percent discount, totaling a 47 percent discount for students purchasing Pearson books.

Cerritos College Bookstore Manager, Robin Lee, is enthusiastic about helping students with the new partnership program.

“We are happy to be involved. Whatever we can do to help students, we are all in,”  Lee said.

Though the program is just beginning, students have benefited.  Prices have gone down, according to Lee.

Though the discount only applies to ares in social sciences, the discount also applies to electronic Pearson books.

English major Lorena Solorzano, who is currently taking a political science class, paid $80 for her new book.

Others, like English major Jessica Castro, said they have not heard about the discount, but that they experienced problems logging in to TalonNet to complete their political science assignments.

“TalonNet has been giving us a lot of problems. My teacher doesn’t want to use TalonNet anymore, he just wants to use MyPolisciLab, instead,” Castro said.

The TalonNet server reported log-in problems earlier in the semester, and some of the failures were concerning this new partnership.  

“About 1,500 students jumped onto the server and crushed the capacity levels and we are trying to find out how to work with the integration technology,” Reece said.

Once technological issues are addressed, Reece’s next step is to help integrate other departments into the partnership.