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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Quartz reports

Seven Rhode Island universities, including Brown and Rhode Island College, will move to open-license textbooks [1] in a bid to save students $5 million over the next five years, the governor announced [September 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 [Cloudflare protected] 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.

[...] 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.

Open licenses allow for content to be shared, unlike traditional textbooks which limit the use of their materials. [Richard Culatta, the chief innovation officer for Rhode Island] remembers teaching and replacing a section of a textbook with more relevant information for his class, only to be informed that he was infringing on international copyright law.

[1] A very bloated (webfonts) all-script-driven page.

Note: If you are thinking of using "begs the question" in the same way the state official did, that is a bad idea.

Our previous discussions of student materials and adoption of openness.

Original Submission

1. "-- OriginalOwner_" - http://tinyurl.com/OriginalOwner
2. "reports" - http://qz.com/792934/the-crazy-price-of-college-textbooks-is-pushing-more-us-universities-to-adopt-an-open-source-solution-including-seven-in-rhode-island-brown-and-rhode-island-college/#well
3. "will move to open-license textbooks" - http://www.innovate.ri.gov/open
4. "[1]" - http://archive.li/hkZSf
5. "estimated last year [Cloudflare protected]" - https://www.aei.org/publication/the-new-era-of-the-400-college-textbook-which-is-part-of-the-unsustainable-higher-education-bubble/#post-904880
6. "Student Public Interest Research Groups" - http://www.studentpirgs.org/sites/student/files/reports/The%20Billion%20Dollar%20Solution.pdf
7. ""begs the question"" - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#firstHeading
8. "previous discussions" - https://soylentnews.org/search.pl?sort=2&op=stories&query=open+textbooks#search
9. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=16567

printed from SoylentNews, Rhode Island Universities' Move to Open-License Textbooks will Save Students $5M over 5 years on 2026-02-16 02:08:58