It’s no secret that the cost of a college education is expensive—and costs are constantly rising. According to College Board’s Trends in College Pricing: Highlights of its 2024 report, from 2023–2024 to 2024–2025, average tuition and fees for full-time undergraduate students increased by 2.7% at public four-year in-state schools, 3.2% at public four-year out-of-state schools, and 3.9% at private nonprofit four-year schools, before adjusting for inflation.
Bay View Analytic’s National Survey on Student Course Material Affordability, 2023, revealed that “7 out of 10 students are worried about meeting their course material costs.” When students can’t afford course materials, not only do their educational experiences suffer, but so does the learning environment of the entire classroom. Students not having access to course materials inhibits class discussions, assignment engagement, and test scores. The question plaguing students and faculty alike is how to mitigate course material costs and expand access to course resources to promote an engaged learning environment. In this regard—and many more—Open Educational Resources (OER) can help.
What are OER?
OER are high-quality, no- or low-cost, adaptable learning materials. OER can include textbooks (i.e., Open Textbooks), worksheets, lectures, and other ancillaries, as well as course modules and entire courses.
How do students benefit from OER?
The financial relief adopting OER offers students is substantial. From 2013 to 2023, “Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) . . . saved more than 1.1 million [University System of Georgia] students over 143 million dollars by funding Open Education Resources (OER) through grants and partnerships with eCore, eMajor, and the University of North Georgia [(UNG)] Press.”
OER also expand access to course materials. Many OER are “born and used digitally, [and] can also be printed and bound at-cost, making [OER] the most accessible option in most cases,” as digital OER can be downloaded for free on multiple devices, and print OER can be purchased at a fraction of the cost of traditional textbooks.
How do educators benefit from OER?
Because OER are published under open licenses, they can be revised and remixed—meaning educators can modify them to best serve their instructional preferences and needs. Most OER are published under the Creative Commons International Attribution license, permitting instructors to “share the resource in any format so long as [they] attribute the original creator and [they] use the resource for noncommercial purposes.” Being able to distribute course materials in any format also improves their accessibility. When more students are able to access course materials, instructors benefit from higher classroom engagement.
OER also foster collaboration among educators. For example, when instructors adopt OER available through ALG, those instructors’ course syllabi are made available through OpenALG: Adoptions to assist instructors who adopt these resources in the future.
Where can I find OER?
OER are available in several places online, such as our catalog of UNG Press Textbooks and OER, where you can download free digital copies of our Open Textbooks and find where to purchase low-cost print copies, and ALG’s OpenALG, featuring Open Textbooks, accompanying ancillaries, and course syllabi from instructors who have adopted OER available through the site.
The UNG Press is proud to be the leading university press in the state of Georgia for OER and Open Textbooks and an advocate for promoting access to education. For more information about adopting, accessing, and developing OER, contact us at ungpress@ung.edu or drop your questions in the comments—we’d love to answer and help you discover how OER can help you.
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