Scaling Investment in Open Textbooks Through the Omnibus Bill ⋆ Epeak World News

"For the first time in nearly a decade, Congress has significantly boosted federal education spending through its $1.3 trillion spending bill. In addition to the good news for early education advocates, legislators have done more than increase higher education spending—the omnibus bill also introduces several new programs. One of these new programs aims to address the issue of college affordability in an unconventional way: through targeting the rapidly growing expense of college textbooks.

The new Open Textbook Pilot supports projects that create or expand the use of openly licensed college texts with the joint goal of reducing student costs and maintaining or improving student learning outcomes, something New America also recommended in our recent comments to the Senate education committee on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. While the investment is small, receiving just $5 million, its payoff for students could be huge. “Of the costs that students face, textbooks are a significant barrier,” said Nicole Allen, director of open education with SPARC, a membership organization representing college and university libraries. According to SPARC, similar efforts at the state level have saved students over $10 for every dollar spent. “Investing in grant programs for OER is one of the smartest investments that Congress can make,” said Allen.

Despite the potential of this kind of program, the explanatory statement accompanying the omnibus bill is slim on specific details about how exactly the pilot will work. To get a better idea of what Congress intends for this new competitive program, however, a good place to start looking is the Affordable College Textbook Act of 2017.

This past fall, Congress reintroduced the Affordable College Textbook Act in both the House and Senate, marking its fifth attempt to create a competitive grant program to fund open textbooks. Open textbooks are one example of open educational resources, or OER—content that is released using an open content license (such as Creative Commons’ open licenses), making the content free to use, adapt, and share online. This legislation provides greater insight into the rationale for the newly created Open Textbook Pilot, the kinds of activities that new grants could cover, and a framework for how the U.S. Department of Education should think about evaluating applications...."