News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Tennessee Textbook Affordability Task Force has sent resolutions to the Comptroller’s Office in hopes of finding alternative solutions to cut college textbook expenses.
Tennessee Tech’s Public Service Coordinator Sharon Holderman is one of some 50 representatives for universities across the state on the task force. She said that their goal is to help universities utilize more affordable or free alternatives such as open educational resources (OERs).
“When they first started coming out, OERs especially, free resources were considered not valid or not academically rigorous,” Holderman said. “And that’s not really the case anymore there are a lot of materials out there that faculties and universities are creating.”
Holderman said that on Tech’s campus, their new textbook affordability website provides resources for faculty and staff to use instead of costly textbooks. She said they hope to expand the work by having faculty create their own OERs to expand access for all.
Holderman said that research has shown that one of the main reasons people struggle to attend higher education is the cost of attending. She said that it stems from a variety of things, including faculty’s choice of textbook and the need to have updated information.
“And some of them will choose what we call non-traditional textbooks so they could be just everyday novels to they could be a different type of book that isn’t a considered a textbook. And those are usually much more affordable, but once you get into your traditional textbook with chapters and homework and answer keys and all that good stuff, what happens is the publishers know that it will be used as a textbook and then they can set a price accordingly, and then they will release new editions and depending on if the faculty member wants to update to the new editions, which is usually more common in the sciences ”
According to Tech’s textbook affordability website, the cost of textbooks has increased 88 percent between 2006 and 2016.
