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States Are Moving To Cut College Costs By Introducing Open-Source Textbooks (qz.com)
In an effort to curb the rising cost of textbooks, which went up by 88% between 2006 and 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Maryland and New York have announced initiatives that adopt open-source, copyright-free textbooks. The initiatives will reward colleges who adapt or scale the use of OER (open educational resources) -- "materials like electronic textbooks that typically use licenses that are far less restrictive than traditional, copyrighted textbooks," reports Quartz. From the report: The University System of Maryland recently announced that it would be giving out 21 "mini-grants" to seven community colleges and five public four-year schools. The grants will go to "faculty who are adopting, adapting or scaling the use of OER [open educational resources] in Fall 2017 through high-enrollment courses where quality OER exists," according to the announcement. Although the mini-grants are only $500 to $2,500 each, the effort in Maryland is expected to save 8,000 students up to $1.3 million in the Fall 2017 semester alone. That's a significant amount, but just a drop in the bucket of what students in the state spend on textbooks each year. Another big investment in open educational resources came in the budget passed in New York state last week. The news was somewhat buried by the fact that the budget includes free tuition for New York students whose families make up to $125,000 a year, but the state will also be putting $8 million into open source materials over the next fiscal year.
We use open source physics textbooks where I attend and it actually works out pretty well. The books are pretty well-written. The PDF versions are free, the dead-tree edition is like $100. The one-time key for the online assignments is like $40. At the end of the day, other than tuition I only had to spend $40. Pretty awesome idea if you ask me.... the rest of my classes require books ranging from $120 to $400.
The college book publishing racket has to end.
The additional amusement watching retarded millennial kids who never learned to use a real computer and are too cheap to buy a tablet trying to use the eBook version as well as complete assignments on their phones is priceless as well. I've seen people trying to write papers on phones recently. They'd rather fumble with a $600 phone than spend $100 on a used laptop. Boggles the mind.
An alternative to those student loans is something like Western Governors University. Founded by the governors of 19 states, WGU is an online university that charges $6,000/year. There's a $1,500 tax credit, so the cost if $4,500 / year. The student doesn't even have to pay that nuch, though. Employers can provide pre-tax tuition assistance up to about $5,500 / year, so many employers do offer a couple thousand dollars. There's one other thing that makes WGU even easier to afford:
Many WGU courses have the final exam be an industry-standard certification exam. For example, for my networking class the final exam was the Cisco CCNA exam. Other course final exams include Microsoft and CompTIA certifications. What that means is that halfway through school I had already earned a few certifications, which helped lead to a much higher-paying job. In the three years I've been at WGU, I've paid them $18,000, got $4,500 in tax credits, and been paid $60,000 more salary than when I started. So rather than graduating with debt, I'll graduate with a lot more money than when I started school.
There's one last trick for WGU to cost the cost even further. Like most schools, you can transfer in credits. Well for the networking course that has Cisco CNNA as the exam, you can transfer in an existing CCNA certification. So what you can do is spend a year studying and maybe getting some of the certs before you even enroll and start paying. Then when you enroll (and start paying $6K/year), you immediately start out with a year of credits already done, through your existing certs. Even better is to study and *not* get the cert. The first month after you enroll in WGU, you go get the cert and THEY pay for it. That can save up to $1,000, because some of the certs are expensive.
All in all, in your first year at WGU you can get two years of credits at a net cost of $4,500. Not bad. Even better if your enployer covers half of that $4,500, as mine did.