Burn your books
Audrey Barker
Issue date: 5/12/08 Section: News
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An April 29 press release stated, "Representatives of dozens of colleges, universities and other non profit and academic organizations will meet in California … to launch a pioneering national project: Creation of high-quality, accessible and culturally relevant textbooks for community college students that will be freely available on the internet."
In 2005, the Government Accountability Office reported that textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation in the 20 years since 1985. In the period from December 1986 to December 2004 textbooks prices almost tripled.
The same report disclosed that during the 2003-2004 academic year, students attending two-year colleges paid an average of $886 for books and supplies. These costs account for almost three quarters of the total cost of a student's tuition and fees.
"Making free and low-cost open textbooks available to community college students will help reduce the escalating costs of higher education," stated District Chancellor Martha Kanter in an FHDA press release.
The national Campaign to Reduce College Textbook Costs released a statement signed by 1,000 college professors from 300 colleges in 50 states on April 18 declaring their preference for high-quality, affordable textbooks, including open textbooks over expensive commercial textbooks.
The District open-source textbook project will be jump started by an initial $530,000 grant by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a principal leader of funding freely available digital learning materials geared toward any student with Internet access. The Hewlett board awarded the one-year grant on March 17, the press release stated.
Judy Baker, Dean of the Global Access Program at Foothill College and Director of the Community College Open Textbook Project, said that after that initial financial push, there are four long term sustainability models being considered for this project. The first model involves Internet startup company Flat World Knowledge LLC.
Flat World Knowledge provides, at no cost, brief textbooks that have been written and edited by leading industry professionals. It holds an open license through creative commons, and allows teachers to delete items, reorganize chapters and edit sentences freely to create a custom textbook.
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