Does it bother you that the majority of student see mandatory subscriptions to all of these services as a giant ripoff?

I mean, you could save every student maybe 600 a year if the university purposely used books that are one edition out of date. That's the same as lowering tuition around 5% at most places. Would this really affect the quality of education in any meaningful way?

"Strategic partnership" sounds like another way of saying the university gets some money out of the deal at the expense of their students pocket books.

How is this justified from the position of someone who maintains relationships with these companies?

He works for the university; he's not the one getting ripped off. Top Hat might make his life easier because they have simpler contracts and are nicer when it comes to customization, but in the end the students are still getting hit with the bill. His perspective is irrelevant to the problem. Until the point where colleges have to actively recruit new blood and aren't bursting at the seams with applicants, the kickback partnership between publishers and universities will never go away. It makes way too much sense to stick the student with every bill, because the system knows they will pay it.

I'm not involved in the curriculum development side of things, so I don't have much input into that. And prior to the implementation of Top Hat, our students had all been using physical "clickers" to respond to in-class questions.

However, Top Hat implemented a program where the students could trade in their old clicker and get a 5 year Top Hat subscription. Plus a "Lifetime" Top Hat subscription is cheaper than buying a clicker, so students have seen it as a net win.

We do not receive financial compensation from Cengage, Pearson, or McGraw. The strategic part is that they offer more services to us, let us test new stuff they're toying with, and help our profs develop custom content.

I still take classes, so I definitely feel the hit of these textbook prices. It's also why I've advocated for pushing more towards a "direct integration" method of provide course content in our LMS. Students pay ~$60 for access to the content, instead of $100+ for a textbook. It still adds up, but it's a way to start to lower costs.

(and the prices keep going down. I just found out yesterday that one of our vendors is dropping the price of a range of course content because of high adoption rate)

The problem with these lifetime subscriptions is that you never know if you're going to actually use them. Textbook prices are definitely a problem, but it's usually much easier to rent or resell textbooks than the equivalent of software.

You also don't buy textbooks until you actually need them. I know many students who have felt pressured into "saving money" on "all 4 years!" plans only to find they don't need a product most terms or they stay and extra semester/term/year and need to spend even more than they were planning.