student-affordability
(3)
Follett Higher Education
The 153-year-old bookseller has become an operating layer for campus life - moving textbooks, hoodies, financial aid and digital access through one unusually broad retail network.
Alastair Adam
Alastair Adam is the co-founder and Co-CEO of FlatWorld, the Boston-based publisher on a mission to bring US college textbook prices back down to earth. A Cambridge-trained lawyer who started in London M&A, he spent two decades advising the information and publishing world before buying the assets of the old Flat World Knowledge in 2016 and rebuilding it. Today FlatWorld's peer-reviewed, low-cost titles are used by faculty at well over 1,500 North American institutions. He also chairs the board of PLOS, the nonprofit open-science publisher.
FlatWorld
FlatWorld is a Boston-based college textbook publisher on a mission to make high-quality course materials affordable for students. Founded in 2007 as Flat World Knowledge by publishing veterans Eric Frank and Jeff Shelstad, it pioneered low-cost, customizable digital textbooks before being acquired and rebranded in 2016 by Alastair Adam and John Eielson. Today FlatWorld offers 145+ peer-reviewed titles across 20+ disciplines, an auto-graded homework system, AI study tools, audiobooks and print-on-demand books - typically priced between roughly $25 and $42, a fraction of traditional textbook costs.