Yes, the quality of OER can vary across courses. That is also true of commercial textbooks. In the days before OER caught on, faculty and student complaints about textbooks were legion, and often warranted. It’s also true that the development and curation of OER is labor that’s worthy of compensation. But cost isn’t just cost. It’s also a question of access. There’s what you assign, and then there’s what they read. In most classes, those two are not the same. Textbook costs often prevent students from buying the book in the first place. When that happens, what starts as an economic issue quickly becomes an academic issue (and then can become a financial aid issue). A great book that goes unbought and unread isn’t as good as a pretty good book that a student actually reads.
