Are Elite Universities Committed to Openness?

"And at the end of the day, adoption of OER begin and end with faculty and leadership. Tidewater was the first in the nation to create an entire degree program with OER because executive leadership was adamant about being the first to accomplish this feat. UMUC’s success was made possible because of collaboration between tenured and adjunct faculty, program chairs, and other support staff. This type of collaboration may be easier at community colleges, where faculty are solely focused on teaching and learning--as opposed to balancing other demands like research. There may also be differences in terms of faculty governance—part-time non-tenured track faculty make up 68.7 percent of the workforce at community colleges, compared to 40 percent at private non-profit institutions.

It may also be easier to design an OER-based degree for a 2-year degree program, as opposed to a 4-year one since more OER either exists or are developed for first-year introductory-level courses. However, Wiley College—an open-access private 4-year HBCU—only uses OER (they also helped create the first MOOC offered by an HBCU). And UMUC is managing to replace textbooks with OER and other free materials for all of its undergraduate and graduate courses. Length of degree and availability of OER may be barriers, but are ones that well-resourced elite institutions are arguably best positioned to overcome.

Elite universities may not lag behind forever. For one, the type of students they serve could begin to change. Current trends suggest high school graduates inevitably will become increasingly less affluent. As demographics shift, elite institutions slowly but surely may start looking to OER-based degree programs. But even if students attending elite institutions don’t change, these programs could still help.

As students struggle with (and the public is increasingly concerned about) student debt, elite institutions could help students save the $1,200 or more per year they may spend on books and supplies by adopting OER-based degree programs. And, elite institutions could do this without having to touch what continues to be their largest source of revenue—tuition."