'Z-degree' gives texts for free to Central Lakes College students - StarTribune.com | Minnesota

"At Minnesota state colleges, students spend an average of $1,000 a year on textbooks alone...Central Lakes College has joined a growing national movement to ditch pricey textbooks in favor of material that can be found online for free. This semester, it launched one of the state’s first “Z-degrees,” meaning that all the required readings — in this case, for an associate of arts degree — are available at zero cost to students. “For a lot of students that are living in poverty, every penny counts,” said Martha Kuehn, dean of liberal arts and sciences at Central Lakes, a community and technical college with 6,000 students.... Already, nearly 10 percent of college instructors nationwide say they use free online textbooks in their courses, according to a 2017 report by the Babson Survey Research Group....

This month, Central Lakes published its first “Zero Textbook Cost Course Guide,” which includes classes in math, philosophy, history, biology, the arts and more...."