Transcript Textbook Affordability

Dan Crump, American River College
Dolores Davison, Foothill College
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Textbook costs have increased nearly 200% in
the last two decades.
7 out of 10 students have reported that they
have not purchased a textbook for a course
because of cost.
Open educational resources have become a
popular option (in the opinion of many) to
replace traditional paper texts.
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The US Government Accounting Office (GAO)
reported in 2008 that the national average
spent on college textbooks was $900; at the
time, more than one and a half times the cost
of tuition for a full time schedule at a CCC
In response to this, the CCCCO created a task
force to look at textbook costs and make
recommendations; these recommendations
included the following:
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Standardize textbook adoption policies
Urge faculty to decide on texts early, to allow
for maximum used copies
Avoid adding classes to the schedule late,
forcing the bookstore to get copies of texts
Promote programs such as textbook rentals,
library reserves, and quantity discounts.
Create college and/or district textbook
affordability task forces
Consider having the CCCs participate
in the CSUs digital marketplace plan
 Promote and encourage the use of
Open Educational Resources and other
low cost, pedagogically sound
alternatives
 Ensure that the use of digital and
other works would not hamper
transfer and articulation
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How many of your colleges currently do any
of those things? All of them? Some
combinations?
What are faculty doing at your campus to
combat the prices of textbooks?
Have you been pressured to cut the costs of
texts or adopt OER materials?
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Academic Freedom in choosing a text
Quality of OER materials
Availability of ancillaries and materials to
use with the text
Reliability/availability of alternative or OER
texts
Others?
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There is always some piece of legislation
going forward to “solve” the textbook issue
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Textbook prices on (or linked to) the college
online class schedule
Price the publisher charges the bookstore
(“net price”)
Price the publisher would charge the public
(“list price”)
Copyright dates of the previous 3 editions
Major differences/revisions between the
current and previous editions
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Prohibit the use of textbooks unless they are:
1)offered with pricing tiers that include (at a
minimum) a “rental price” and a “lifetime
purchase” price
2) offered with cloud storage access
3) include a refund policy
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Establishes the California Open Education
Resources Council (includes academic senate
appointees from CCC, CSU, UC)
Determine a list of the 50 most popular
lower-division courses to develop into open
source materials
Publishers must be willing to provide 3 copies
of textbooks to campus libraries
$25 million dollar investment (estimated cost
of $500,000 for each textbook
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Establishes the California Digital Open Source
Library to house open source materials and
provide free/low cost access for students and
faculty
Creative Commons attribution license
Intent that CCC, CSU and UC campuses
provide incentives to faculty to choose open
source textbooks
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Provide information about textbooks,
including ISBN number, in a specified order
This information to be submitted to MERLOT
(Multimedia Educational Resource for
Learning and Online Teaching) and be
available for public use
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Require textbook publishers to provide price
and content comparison information to
faculty to help them choose least expensive
textbook for students
Re-introduction of SB 832 (Corbett, 2007)
which was vetoed by Governor
Schwarzenegger
What are your thoughts?