A pilot project at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) is aimed at addressing a growing challenge for students: skyrocketing costs for classroom textbooks.

A $5,000 “innovation grant" from the NMC Foundation will pay for ten faculty members to go textbook-free this fall, instead adapting their courses around open educational resources (OERs). OERs are instructional materials including electronic textbooks, modules, lesson plans and readings that are free and legally available online for anyone to use and tailor to the classroom.

"If you go to NMC, textbooks are 15 to 30 percent of your college costs,” says Director of Library Services Tina Ulrich, who is spearheading the pilot program. “Nationwide, textbook costs have increased 812 percent in the last 30 years, which is more than healthcare (costs). Publishing companies are making millions off of 18-year-old kids. You can approach it as a social justice issue."

While federal legislation now mandates the disclosure of ISBN numbers for assigned textbooks – allowing students to shop around for used or cheaper copies online – Internet sellers like Amazon don’t accept financial aid. Publishers have responded by issuing new editions each year, making used versions obsolete. Students who can’t afford the $1,400 NMC recommends annually budgeting for textbooks may try to make due without them, putting them at a disadvantage in the classroom.

“It has a significant effect on their grades if they’re not using the classroom materials,” says Ulrich. “They’re making a choice and guessing, hoping they can pull it off.”

Marilyn Jaquish – one of 10 instructors selected out of 22 who applied to participate in the pilot – will adapt her Professional Communications class using OERs this fall. “It is time-consuming, but so exciting to be able to break this bind that tradition and publishing companies have kept us in,” says Jaquish. (In compensation for their efforts, instructors will receive a choice of $500 or a new iPad). “For years, I have been bothered by requiring a textbook that now costs over $200, especially since it cannot be easily resold.”

Jaquish says there are “many” textbooks in her subject matter that are now available free online. “I will be jumping from URL to URL to pick up the chapters I like the most,” she says, adding she plans to supplement those materials with TED talks and her own tools culled over 30 years teaching the class. “It is not an easy task (to adapt)…but this breakthrough has been a long time coming.”

Traverse City Commissioner Gary Howe – who has been an adjunct professor at NMC since 2004 – says he’s looking forward to adapting his World Regional Geography class as part of the project. “It’s a good cause,” he says. “I’m excited about the opportunity to freshen up my class.” Howe also notes there is “so much material” for his subject available online that he envisions being able to permanently make the shift to OERs. “For me, I assume it’ll be something I adopt for the class,” he says.

Ulrich is hopeful the same will hold true for other instructors – and that NMC will eventually expand the program. She projects that if the five highest registration classes on campus utilized OERs, it would save students $494,430 in textbook costs in one semester alone.

“The bookstore model of getting revenue has already been declining,” Ulrich says. “Ours will likely adapt. And the benefits to students are so huge.” Ulrich predicts, too, that the college will be able to make up any revenues from lost textbook sales in another area: “It would make NMC hugely competitive in the (recruiting) field,” she says. “People would come to this college if they knew their textbook costs would be significantly less.”