“If you have the power to make [financial issues] go away for someone, you should.”
— OER adopter Tori Matthews, Department of Biology, Monroe Community College
“This is a social justice issue. This is about the democratization of education.”
— OER adopter Amber Gilewski, Department of Psychology, Tompkins Cortland Community College
OER offer a low- or no-cost alternative to traditional textbooks in a time when students have an increasingly difficult time paying for books, while books continue to become more expensive.
Stephens and Pickavance (2017) note that "While faculty and administrators have little control over the rising cost of tuition, they are able to offer students ... OER," which "can deliver comparable results for students as traditional textbooks, but at no cost."