This post was contributed by Amy Hofer, Open Oregon Educational Resources. Thank you to Chandra Lewis and Benjamin Skillman, RMC Research, for contributing to the design and analysis of this study, and for reviewing this post.
The Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education Open Textbooks Pilot Program call for proposals in Fall 2020 included a requirement that proposed projects should promote student success. Projects were required to demonstrate impact on student savings and student outcomes. Open Oregon Educational Resources shared our approach to this grant requirement in a post that is archived at Improvements in Student Achievements Resulting from Equity Lens.
After four years, we are finally ready to share the results of our work!
- This post describes the student savings impact of our federal grant project. Our key finding regarding student savings is that we almost doubled the projected student savings estimate, far exceeding our target.
- We share our student outcomes impact in the post Strong Design, Strong Outcomes: Instructional Design Support Makes a Difference. Our key finding regarding student outcomes is that students benefit from affordable, high-quality course materials implemented with the support of an instructional designer.
- Links to the textbooks and ancillary materials that we created through the grant are available via Open Curriculum Projects Soft Launch.
Student Savings Targets vs Results
The grant had a goal to eliminate required textbook costs that had to be measured in two ways: the average cost savings per student, and the total cost savings for students. The project set targets for this grant goal that we exceeded.
| Project Target | Project Result |
|---|---|
| Pilot courses will result in 2,700 students saving an estimated $370,000 as a result of adopting OER | 7,151 students saved an estimated $730,265 as a result of adopting OER |
| The average cost savings for students in courses adopting OER will be $100 per student, per course | The average cost savings for students was estimated at $112 per student, per course |
Our targets were based on the projected number of pilot courses, estimated student enrollment per course, and reported cost of course materials for the relevant courses, at the time that we designed our project proposal.
For the 74 sections that piloted the OER developed by our project, we asked instructors for the cost of their previously assigned course materials. Where this information was not available, or if the course had not been previously taught, we used $100 as an estimate (for more information on this decision, see Is the average cost of a textbook $100?). Enrollment data was provided by the Higher Education Coordinating Commission Office of Research and Data.
Student Savings in Context
Extensive research in the open education field demonstrates that the cost of course materials can become a barrier to student success, and can have a negative impact on retention, time to degree, and completion. The student savings impact resulting from this Open Textbook Pilot Project is a win for the project participants, and for the students who avoided the textbook costs they would have incurred taking sections of the same courses that assigned commercial textbooks.
The Oregon Higher Education Statewide Snapshot for the 2022-23 academic year shows that books and supplies were 5% of the average total cost of attendance at an institution of higher education, an estimated $1,382 per year. The snapshot also shows that 36% of public community college and university students in Oregon were unable to meet their expenses via expected resources (family contributions, student earnings, and grant aid), and 26% of Oregon students take out federal loans, which correlates with lower graduation rates.
According to the U.S. Student Public Interest Research Group, 65% of students skipped buying or renting a textbook in 2020, 21% skipped purchasing an access code, and 90% worried that not purchasing course materials would impact their grade. These numbers track with findings from 2022 at Oregon State University, shared in the blog post Collecting local data to advocate for Oregon State students, that 61% of student survey respondents do not purchase their textbooks because of cost. Oregon State University survey results showed that 38% of respondents don’t register for a course, 44.5% take fewer classes, 18% drop the course and 14% withdraw from the course because of textbook costs, and that the impact was greater for students who identified as non-white.
The cost of textbooks is a small dollar amount compared to the total cost of attendance. Yet the work of researchers such as Sara Goldrick-Rab shows that financial aid does not cover the cost of higher education, and therefore seemingly small additional expenses can create an emergency that results in students dropping out in spite of their loan obligations. In fact, according to the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, most emergency aid, in the form of campus vouchers, emergency loans, and unrestricted grants, is likely to be for dollar amounts of just $100-$500.
It has been amply demonstrated that open educational resources address these problems by saving money for students. The open education field can justifiably remain focused on affordability to promote student success.
Funding
Our grants drew from Governor’s Emergency Education Relief funding and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) in the U.S. Department of Education (eighty percent of the total cost of the program is funded by FIPSE, with the remaining twenty percent representing in-kind personnel costs funded by Open Oregon Educational Resources).
The contents of this post were developed under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.
