The Crazy Price of College Textbooks Is Pushing More US Universities to Adopt an “Open-Source” Solution

Seven Rhode Island universities, including Brown and Rhode Island College, will move to open-license textbooks in a bid to save students $5 million over the next five years, the governor announced Tuesday (Sept. 27). The initiative is meant to put a dent in the exorbitant cost of college and, more specifically, college textbooks. Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan Flint, and a writer at the American Enterprise Institute, estimated last year that college textbook prices rose 945% between 1978 and 2014, compared to an overall inflation rate of 262% and a 604% rise in the cost of medical care.

That is not the result of a general trend of higher costs in publishing, he notes: the consumer price index for recreational books has been falling relative to overall inflation since 1998. “It begs the question, are we getting 1,000% more value?” asked Richard Culatta, the chief innovation officer for Rhode Island who was the director for the office of educational technology in the Obama administration.

Open textbooks are defined as “faculty-written, peer-reviewed textbooks that are published under an open license – meaning that they are available free online, they are free to download, and print copies are available at $10-40, or approximately the cost of printing,” according to a report by the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) (pdf). They are part of the move toward Open Educational Resources, which has roots in the open-source software movement, it says...