Move toward open-source textbooks smart, thrifty - Editorial Board, Union-Bulletin

College costs big bucks. Tuition, food, a place to stay, fees and course materials all pile up. Some of this is unavoidable, but a movement to cut the cost of textbooks has the potential to save students serious money. At Blue Mountain Community College, the move toward what are known as open educational resources has saved students an estimated $1 million over the past two years, the East Oregonian reported last week. A typical textbook and lab manual for college-level human anatomy and physiology, for example, has a list price of about $450 and even with discounts, those books will set a student back $295 on Amazon. By comparison, a student in a class that adopts a similar textbook published by OpenStax College pays $0. http://www.union-bulletin.com/opinion/editorials/move-toward-open-source-textbooks-smart-thrifty/article_4db4a174-482d-11e9-b92b-0f4cb437f072.html