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UNC Affordable & OER Committee

UNC Affordable and Open Educational Resources Committee

Nancy A. Henke, Committee Chair
Textbook Affordability Librarian
nancy.henke@unco.edu

What UNC Students Say About Textbook Costs

Some students already struggle to pay for rent, bills, transportation, tuition and even necessities like food. Imagine the relief if we had one less thing to worry about, like not purchasing books.
I spend less than I could on textbooks, but it is still a sizable chunk of money. Multiple times I have had to put off paying certain bills or repairing my car in order to pay for textbooks
“I know students who have failed because they can’t afford the textbook…it has caused me to stress greatly and I had to choose between getting food or getting the textbook.”
“Taking classes without the required materials is a lot like starting a course half-way through the semester; it feels like every assignment and lecture is in the middle of a topic that you’ve never even heard about before... It felt like I was getting half the education that I’d paid for simply because I wasn’t able to afford the materials for those classes.”

Low-Cost and No-Cost

This chart shows how Affordable and Open Educational Resources (AOER) can be understood to include both low cost and no cost materials. 

Hierarchical chart showing the relationship between low-cost and no-cost materials. Top level: AOER; Second Level: Low-Cost Materials and No-Cost Materials. Third level, under Low-Cost Materials: $20 or less for all required materials. Third level, under No-Cost materials: Open Educational Resources (OER) and Library-Licensed Educational Resources (LER). Fourth level, under OER: Items in the public domain or openly licensed. Allow for revision, remixing, and redistribution. Fourth level, under LER: Items from library collections and/or subscription databases. Traditional copyright status; cannot be revised or remixed. Fifth level, under OER: textbooks, course modules, syllabi, slide decks, videos, simulations, much more! Fifth level, under LER: ebooks, print books, videos, artwork, much more!