To the editors,
The August 26 article, “Survey: Price of Course Supplies Impacts Scholar Success” highlights how college students are making course choices based mostly on the price of textbooks quite than tutorial pursuits or profession objectives, nevertheless it fails to say a essential textbook affordability mechanism: open academic assets (OER). OER instantly addresses the excessive price of economic textbooks by serving as a free, accessible and high-quality different. By changing pricey textbooks with free, overtly licensed educational supplies, schools and universities can be certain that all college students have entry to the required supplies, serving to them pursue the programs that align with their tutorial and profession aspirations. With OER, college students not have to decide on between their tutorial objectives and their monetary well-being.
The article quotes a current survey by Bay View Analytics during which 40 p.c of scholar respondents “mentioned that their monetary help doesn’t cowl any of their textbooks or associated prices.” OER promotes fairness by making certain that each one college students, no matter socioeconomic standing, have equal entry to studying supplies.
The report that the article cites mentions how “over half (53 p.c) of scholars don’t register for a particular course” or are prone to not performing properly as a result of they can not afford the textbooks. OER instantly combats this subject by giving each scholar entry to the supplies they want from day one of many course with out an added price burden.
Efforts to develop and maintain high-quality, overtly licensed academic supplies are rising. We signify one such effort: since 2018, DOERS3 has labored to advance OER sustainability throughout 37 taking part methods and statewide/provincewide initiatives, which serve greater than 7.84 million college students at 876 schools and universities within the US and Canada.
Because of this, information of OER amongst school and college students is rising. In a 2023 report by Bay View Analytics, 72 p.c of college reported some degree of consciousness of OER, with 59 p.c saying that they had been “conscious” or “very conscious” of OER, a knowledge level that has trended upward for the previous decade. Scholar leaders are additionally advocating for school to think about using OER, recognizing the worth of OER in lowering the price of greater training and offering alternatives for school to customise content material – usually with college students as companions – to higher meet scholar studying wants.
The steering committee of the Driving OER Sustainability for Scholar Success (DOERS3) multi-state collaborative.
