Viewpoint: The Economic Case for Creative Commons Textbooks

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Viewpoint: The Economic Case for Creative Commons Textbooks

10/4/2005

2. Do a study to determine how much undergraduates currently spend per year on average for these courses. Let's say students spend $500/year on average for these courses.

4. The institution establishes a course material fee for these courses, which is some percentage of the current textbook cost (e.g. a 100% fee would be $500/year for first-time, full-year students). Obviously, a lower percentage fee would save students money; a higher percentage would give the university more money to work with. Schools with different financial models and objectives could set their fees accordingly. For example, Ivy League schools may want to add value for their students, and for their students a 100% fee would be a small part of the overall cost of their education. On the other hand, community colleges may want to have a 0% fee to hold down costs for their students.

5. Students would not be required to purchase textbooks for the 100 courses covered by the fee.

6. Faculty are free to assign commercial textbooks for these courses, but if they do the cost will be covered with revenue from the course material fee.

7. If faculty use OpenTextbook content, then the money that would otherwise be spent on textbooks could go towards customizing the OpenTextbook content (e.g. it could go for faculty stipends, student support, and paid staff support, etc.).

8. Some schools may also want to establish a policy where the materials developed with the fee would also go into the creative commons. If schools do this, then the content developers back at the Open University would be able to select from the locally developed materials to upgrade the course materials they create/manage on an on going basis.

OpenTextbook has yet to take hold as a formal consortium. Rather, we are in an exploratory phase, introducing the concept to stimulate discussion of a number of different but interrelated cost savings issues, each representing a different lever that policy makers could move separately or together. Some schools, for example, may want to treat the open textbook content simply as a library resource. Others may want to provide faculty with financial incentives and resources to customize the coalition's content. Also, any specific policy proposal would need to address licensing issues governing how said customized content would be owned. And, finally, different means of distribution (electronic vs. print) would entail different costs that would have to be addressed. The main point, however, is that a creative commons textbook initiative may not only save students money, it could also give faculty more freedom to customize the content of their courses.

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