University of Missouri To Use Open Source And Other Cheaper Alternatives For General Education Textbook (columbiatribune.com)

Rudi Keller, writing for Columbia Tribune: The University of Missouri will move quickly to use open source and other cheaper alternatives for general education textbooks, building on initiatives already in place, system President Mun Choi said. At an event with members of the Board of Curators, administrators, lawmakers, faculty from all four campuses and student representatives, Choi said the intent is to save money for students while providing up-to-date materials. Faculty, including graduate assistants, will be eligible for incentive payments of $1,000 to $10,000 for preparing and adopting materials that save students money, Choi said. Textbooks are sometimes overlooked as a contributor to the cost of attending college, Choi said. "We want to provide our students an opportunity to have a low cost, high-quality alternative," Choi said.

Comments

Re:All schools should do this.

[joelgrimes]

Hire some experts to write text books under a creative commons licence

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sell hard copies at cost

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electronic copies free as .epubs, .pdfs

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They have math, from pre-algebra to calculus plus statistics. Physics, chemistry, astronomy. biology, microbiology, economics, psychology, U.S. history

There are quite a few efforts along the lines of what you are suggesting, but Openstax is my favorite because they are well funded (Gates Foundation and Hewlett Foundation, among others), they produce a consistent, high-quality product, they don't try to suck you into their ecosystem - they just write and give away the textbooks.

The Open Textbook Network is also very good, but they are more curators of all free textbooks and not so much producers.