Open Textbooks Save Students Millions

Textbook costs are one of the unwelcome surprises students face after registering for classes. Required textbooks can cost hundreds of dollars, and it’s so frustrating when the texts aren’t even used much in class.

Open Education Resources are free “open source” textbooks and resources written by professors and industry experts on all sorts of topics. Currently a number of Clark College professors are looking at their books to see if they can be switched over to Open Education Resources. In Summer and Fall Quarter of this year, some CAP classes used the College of the Redwood’s freely released Prealgebra textbook. Biology 160 is using Concepts in Biology from OpenStax, which can be printed for $29 on Amazon or $23.50 from the Clark College Bookstore. In comparison, the Biology 100 textbook costs over $90 new.

An Open Textbook bill was introduced to the US Senate in October to fund pilot programs at colleges and universities to develop more Open Education Resources. Read the Campus Technology announcement for more details.