Making College (Textbooks) Affordable

Per the Higher Education Opportunity Act (Pub. L. 110-315), colleges and universities have a duty to provide students with information at the time of registration indicating the estimated cost of course content. Despite this duty, many institutions of higher learning neglect this duty. The Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative remedies this issue for students. See Steven Bell, How Does Your Campus Bookstore Handle Library Ebooks?, CHARLESTON HUB (Aug. 17, 2022); see also Steven Bell, Open VS. Affordable: A Balancing Act for Academic Librarians,  CHARLESTON HUB (Jun 1, 2022) (discussing the intersection of Creative Commons Licensing and the OER initiative). But see Bill Rosenblatt, Disruption Comes to Higher-Ed Publishing, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (Aug. 16, 2019) (noting how some textbook publishers have pivoted to an online subscription model in response to the rise in course instructors using open educational resources).