“Sometimes I choose to buy course materials over buying food. this should say a lot about the cost of education.”
“It is very frustrating that a book I will only use for 3 months costs me two paychecks.”
“My text books were over $500 this semester. It’s a lot of money to be spending on books you use once.”
“I am taking one course this semester and my book cost almost $300. That is beyond outrageous...Something must be done about the cost of textbooks.”
“The population least able to afford anything is forced to pay inflated prices for the tools required for a chance to succeed.”
“Many of my teachers lately have used free, online textbooks and this makes everything less stressful and is very kind of the teachers.”
“I appreciate that several of my instructors purposefully select open-source materials or don't require a textbook at all.”
The high cost of textbooks negatively impacts student access, success, & completion.
"2018 Student Textbook and Course Material Survey: Results and Findings" by Florida Virtual Campus is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Textbook prices are a significant educational barrier for all students. They have a disproportionately negative effect on:
"Textbook Affordability and Student Success for Historically Underserved Populations at CSUCI" by J. Jacob Jenkins, Jaime Hannans, Luis Sanchez, and Jill Leafstedt for openCI, is licensed under CC BY 4.0
OER positively impact student learning, completion, and attainment gaps by improving end-of-course grades and decreasing DFW rates. For example, see these results from a recent University of Georgia study (2018):
Colvard, N., Watson, C. E., & Park, H. (2018). The impact of open educational resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30(2).
