Online 'open textbooks' save students cash
— -- As textbook prices skyrocket, college students and faculty seeking more affordable options increasingly are turning to "open textbooks" as an alternative.
Open textbooks are free textbooks available online that are licensed to allow users to download, customize and print any part of the text. Professors can change content to fit their teaching styles. Some authors offer a print-on-demand service that produces professionally bound copies for $10 to $20.
Textbook prices have outpaced inflation 2-to-1 in the past two decades, says a 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office. They account for 26% of tuition and fees at four-year public universities and nearly three-quarters of costs at community colleges, the GAO says.
Open textbooks can change the way textbooks are used, produced and sold, says Nicole Allen, director of the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign by Student Public Interest Research Groups.
The non-profit student advocacy network has been pushing for open textbooks since 2003, hoping the format catches on so prices will decrease and bring some relief.
"The way we're going to lower prices in the long run is by giving viable options," Allen says. "Right now the publishers have a stronghold on the market. What we're trying to do is expand the market and instigate a market shift."
Allen is leading an effort to gather signatures for an Open Textbook Statement of Intent, which asks faculty to consider using open textbooks. The statement (published at www.maketextbooksaffordable.org) has more than 1,200 signatures from faculty in all 50 states in schools ranging from community colleges to four-year universities to graduate schools.
In California, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District is beginning a project that will train professors to find and use open resources. The goal is to have participants eventually produce their own open textbooks.
Some in the publishing industry have noticed the trend.
Eric Frank spent seven years working for Pearson Education, one of the nation's leading textbook publishers, before quitting last year to pursue a new business venture. He spent three months talking to students, teachers and authors about textbooks, trying to find a solution to their complaints.
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