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Free Online Textbooks Yield 10:1 Return on North Dakota’s Investment

If we can’t get the Noem/McCaulley Administration to relieve students of their debt with free college (because we by no means should act like Bernie Sanders), maybe we can encourage them to reduce the cost of higher education in other, more creative ways.

A new report from the North Dakota State Auditor finds that the North Dakota Legislature’s investment of $107,250 saved its public university students at least ten times that much by driving the adoption of free textbooks, also known as open educational resources (OER).

North Dakota State Auditor, report, 2018.11.14.
North Dakota State Auditor, report, 2018.11.14.

Take that low-end $1.1 million in savings, divide it across the 15,000 affected students, and you get just $73 per student. But these savings came just from pilot implementation, mostly in general education courses. The return on investment, $10 in savings for each dollar of public spending, is remarkable. A dollar spent on tuition relief yields a dollar of student debt relief; a dollar spent to bring more free online textbooks into the classroom may produce $10 of student debt relief.

Open educational resources do take some work. Public domain textbooks, composed much like open-source software, by multiple authors working for the common good and shared love of the discipline rather than profit, don’t come with the same array of supplementary resources (like ready-made slideshows and quizzes), reliable quality control, or guaranteed updated editions every few years. But they also provide instructors and students to customize and contribute to their instructional materials, all while saving some money.

The South Dakota Board of Regents discussed OER last year in October. I don’t know what initiatives they have in motion, but North Dakota’s experience shows that modest investments in pay for instructors to explore and perhaps even develop open educational resources can pay off in far greater savings for students.

5 Comments

  1. Jay Gilbertson 2018-11-28 18:41

    Here’s another idea. Back in the day, I rented my college textbooks from the Univ Wisconsin – River Falls. I recall that for all four years it came to less than $100. (Yes, it was a while back.). Even then, I appreciated not having to buy texts I would never open after class was over. Yes, the texts were a few years old, but the professors augmented content as needed.

  2. Ryan 2018-11-29 08:01

    Renting textbooks still exists but they gouge prices to encourage you to buy. If renting costs 75% of buying and you have no chance to re-sell after the semester, why rent?

    I have purchased tens of thousands of dollars in textbooks, and I agree that something needs to change. I’m not sure how I feel about having sub-par texts as an alternative to expensive texts, but I’m happy to see the power of the book publishers being challenged.

  3. Debbo 2018-11-29 20:21

    Most colleges and universities in Minnesota offer rental and digital texts. Students use those chpices far more than buying textbooks, except for some in their major field.

    Grad school often requires multiple books for one class, so any time there is a less expensive digital option it is a boon to students. Students usually keep most of their grad school books, so renting is uncommon.

  4. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-11-29 22:03

    Sub-par—it can be hard to tell. One wouldn’t think that open-source textbooks would be as good as texts we pay money for. But remember the old studies showing Wikipedia is as good as Encyclopedia Britannica? Open source can produce quality materials, as surely as capitalism can produce crap.

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