Open Markets and Six Public Interest Groups - Along With Students and Academics - Demand DOJ Block Monopolization of Textbook Market

Washington, D.C. — The Open Markets Institute led a coalition of public interest groups and academics in demanding the Department of Justice block the proposed merger of Cengage and McGraw-Hill. If approved, the merger would create the second-largest U.S. provider of textbooks and higher-education materials after Pearson, with $3.16 billion in annual revenue.

The deal would harm students, scholars, academic writers, and taxpayers across the nation.

“This mega-merger would solidify monopoly power to be leveraged at the expense of debt-burdened students across the country who are effectively captive customers,” said Open Markets Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan. “It would raise the costs of already expensive textbooks and limit where academic writers can take their work to print.”

If the merger is approved, the new corporation would control approximately 40 percent of the higher education textbook market. It would make America’s concentration crisis worse.

Signatories to the letter include the Economic Policy Institute, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Open MIC, Public Citizen, Public Knowledge, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Individual signatories include Robert H. Lande, Venable Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Marshall Steinbaum, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Utah, and Spencer Weber Waller, John Paul Stevens Chair in Competition Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Read the full letter to the DOJ here. 

Read the letter signed by students here. 

For more information:

Open Markets: U.S. Enforcers Must Block the McGraw-Hill/Cengage Mega-Merger
American prosperity depends on stopping mega-mergers