Proposal would reduce cost of textbooks

This past summer, the Class of 2015 set a record. Unfortunately, it’s not one that we should celebrate. The Class of 2015 set the record for the most student debt in U.S history.

While not the biggest, one of the most overlooked costs of college is textbooks. The College Board recommends students budget $1,200 per year for textbooks and supplies — that’s almost 40 percent of tuition at a community college.

This October, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Al Franken, D-Minn.; and Angus King, I-Maine; and U.S. Reps. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, and Jared Polis, D-Colo., introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act.

The act aims to tackle the high prices of traditional publishers by encouraging the use of openly licensed textbooks. Open textbooks are facultywritten and peer-reviewed, just like traditional textbooks, but published under a license that allows the public free access online or affordably in print (usually $10-$40 for a hard copy).

Ohio State University has already found success introducing Open Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. This bill aims to duplicate that success at schools across the country. If every student at Ohio State University were assigned one open textbook instead of a traditional textbook each year, it would save students there more than $5 million each year.

I encourage Sens. Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown, and all of Ohio’s representatives, to sponsor this bill. ROBERT GOLDBURG Student Public Interest Research Groups Affordable Textbook Project

Easton, Conn.