Open Educational Resources: A Social Justice Issue?

Yes, I have recently realized that they are both an ecological issue (less paper and physical resources) and an equity issue. They are also a fiscal responsibility matter, as I discuss here in the draft of a speech I am giving to my Toastmaster's group in a few weeks (I have to learn it now, though).  (I'm sort of an expert on the subject.)

Perhaps you’ve had this experience. It’s definitely not hypothetical, and has probably happened to you if you have taken college courses or your children have. You’re signed up for the course, your name is on the roster, and you’re excited about learning. Then you find out right before class, or on the first day, that there is a textbook for the class. All right, books aren’t that expensive, so you go to the bookstore to purchase the textbook. You find out it costs $300. Your heart goes into your throat, or your stomach, or somewhere $300 for a book? What’s it made of, diamonds? What kind of a scam is this?

            This experience has played out millions of times over the past several decades. Even in colleges that keep tuition down—which are mostly open access community and state colleges—textbooks have traditionally cost students between $1200 and $ 1400 per academic year, according to the College Board organization, as reported by CBS News.  However, as higher education has tried to become more accessible and focus on student success and completion, nonprofit foundations and state university systems, such as ours in Georgia, have sought for ways to address the problem of exorbitant textbook costs. In the next six minutes, I wish to inform you on the problem behind these costs, the why of the problem, what is being done successfully to address it, and how this works in a real context. The topic of this speech is Open Educational Resources, which I will refer to as OERs.

            Traditional publishers textbooks are expensive; there’s no doubt there. The textbook we used at Dalton State for a basic public speaking course was about $80, publisher’s price, and that was after a great deal of wrangling with the company. High textbook costs are understandable in some cases: a microbiology book has to contain a lot of high quality photos that were taken by someone who has to be paid for the permission to use them. Some textbooks are in fields that change every year or so—such as computer sciences—and some are in fields so specialized that the only way to get someone to write the text is to pay them a good deal of money.

            However, there are even more insidious reasons for the high costs of textbooks: One is the campus bookstore’s markup. Campus bookstores are not run by colleges, but by third party contractors who are allowed to mark up textbooks as much as they want. Of course, nowadays there is always Amazon and other online booksellers, but they still have to make a profit over the publisher’s costs. 

Another is pure desire for profit.  Not all textbooks need new editions every two years, but the publishers still put them out. As I often say, most liberal arts subjects have changed very little in several decades—or centuries, but that doesn’t stop the publishers putting out new books with shiny covers and more recent photographs. Add to that are all the extras: online study helps, usually—that justify higher prices for textbooks.

            The third reason for the high costs is that the publishers have a monopoly. And like many corporations, larger companies buy up or merge with smaller ones, meaning there are fewer than there used to be and they can control the market.

            But, other than being a costly nuisance, you might ask, why does the costs of textbooks affect me?  It might if you or family members are going to college and you find get the hits to your wallet. But from a societal perspective, it means that students, especially lower income students, are less likely to buy the books, therefore less likely to be successful, and therefore less likely to graduate and make the financial and professional contributions they could. They are also less likely to give the return on investment that we taxpayers make through Pell Grants and loans to help them go to college in the first place. It’s a student learning issue, and an equity issue, and it’s a fiscal issue.  A case can be made that society at large is affected by overpriced textbooks, when you think of the problem at scale.

            If you are wondering if those involved in teaching our students have just sat by and twiddled their thumbs on this issue, you will be glad to know that they haven’t. Starting around 2000, several forces began to merge their efforts to address this problem. The overall project is called Open Educational Resources. The big players have been 1. large foundations, such as the Gates Foundation and Lumina, 2. an organization that supports an alternative copyrighting system for digital resources, called Creative Commons, 3. Individual universities such as MIT, Rice University, Carnegie Mellon, and others who have made so much of their curriculum free on the Internet, and 4. University systems such as those in California, Minnesota, and Georgia.

            Open Educational resources are first, digital. They are downloads or interactive materials on the World Wide Web. They make take the form of whole textbooks, learning modules (not unlike the Toastmaster’s curriculum), games, or courses. A major player is the organization OpenStax, which has published multiple full textbooks, mostly in Science, Tech, Math, and business—some of the most expensive textbooks. Open educational resources are, second, almost always absolutely free, which obviously is a plus. Third, open educational resources are OPEN. That means that they are copyrighted in a way that anyone can take them and change them for their own educational purposes; rewrite a section, take out a section, add a section.  All one would need is the permission—easily obtained, usually, and the right software, and time. Open educational resources are a form of intellectual sharing that has become so common on the Internet, but they are geared for college and sometimes high school students.

            Sounds great, right? From a savings standpoint for students, it is. A student doesn’t have to wait until his next paycheck comes in to buy the textbook, and in the process getting behind on his studies. He can download it the first day. However, anything that sounds so perfect has to have some downsides. For one, somebody has to write these materials, no easy task. For that reason, I’m happy to say that our own university system in Georgia has developed a set of generous grants for faculty teams to create such materials in various subjects. Once the materials are finished, they are made available to instructors and students all over the world, extending the savings and the learning.  According to the official Affordable Learning Georgia site, to date, faculty in Georgia have earned 5.58M in grants, and have saved GA students 69 Million in textbook costs. That’s an ROI for Georgia taxpayers of 12 dollars for every dollar in grants. The amount saved by students all over the world by Georgia-created materials is incalculable. Students in the developing world are especially helped by OERs.

         This is a brief introduction to what I consider an exciting way that higher education is meeting student needs. I chose to speak on this subject because this particular pathway assignment is about research, and I’ve spent five years now researching and working in the world of OERs. It is one of the many things higher education is doing right at this time in history, despite its other problems. This speech has looked at the problem of high textbook costs that led to a new movement called Open educational resources to facilitate knowledge creation and transfer and to help students succeed and finish college. I hope you will benefit from OERs soon.