The era of students using their loans to buy expensive textbooks upfront could be coming to an end, after the academic publisher Pearson announced a shift towards a Netflix-style subscription-based model.

The British company has for years profited from the demand for specialist textbooks at US universities, which students can be required to purchase despite them sometimes costing hundreds of dollars.

Pearson has been badly affected by the growth in secondhand sales and falling revenues. The company has come to accept consumer behaviour has changed and, as a result, it is shifting to a model where material is rented, not owned – similar to the change that has taken place in the music and television industry.

John Fallon, the chief executive of Pearson, announced on Tuesday that the company would focus on convincing students to subscribe to access online publications. “Our digital-first model lowers prices for students and, over time, increases our revenues,” he said. “By providing better value to students, they have less reason to turn to the secondary market.”

Students who want to have a physical copy of a book will still be able to rent one from Pearson for an average price of $60 (£48.30) – about 50% more than the cost of the equivalent ebook.

But the print editions of its 1,500 academic textbooks – which have traditionally been refreshed on a three-year cycle – will now only be updated infrequently. Students who want up-to-date teaching materials will instead have to subscribe to the electronic versions, which will be updated on a regular basis to reflect recent developments in academic fields.

The company, based in London, has faced competition from services such as Amazon’s textbook rental, which allows students to pay only for as long as they need a publication for their course, plus free online material and piracy. The company has already pulled out of the US school textbook business, where margins are much lower.

The decision currently only affects Pearson’s US business, where the company is the biggest player in the university textbook market, although it is likely to have a global impact and change how material is sold in other countries.

The company also finds itself having to make products that appeal to students who were born in this millennium and are used to apps produced to a high standard, rather than using online material made as an afterthought to accompany print editions. It will also be investing in services that collect and mark students’ coursework.

Pearson used to be a sprawling conglomerate that owned a variety of companies from the Financial Times to Alton Towers. However, in recent years, it has disposed of its stakes in many businesses in order to focus on its core business of producing educational material.