Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Emma Wood, Scholarly Communication Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Library.
I contributed a guest post to ACRLog in 2023 about the expansion of state legislation related to Open Educational Resources (OER). With the importance of administrative support to expand OER, it seems useful to revisit this topic as budgetary concerns have rocked academia in the time since 2023. OER initiatives usually require some financial investment: have shaky budgets caused disruption to OER support and progress?
First, on the state level, OER legislation has stayed steady, at least in number, with new bills being introduced and progressing. SPARC has an OER State Policy tracker that updates weekly during the legislative session. In my prior post I noted that there were 11 states with OER-related bills in the current legislative session and 28 states with enacted OER policies in some form based on the SPARC map. At present, there are 13 relevant bills in the current legislative session and 32 states have enacted OER policies. This shows progress or at least stability in OER legislation for the past few years.
OER have caught the attention of state legislatures for a few reasons including their cost-savings to students, potential for higher performance indicators from students, and equity and fairness considerations. Here are some of the types of bills related to OER that are being considered or have been signed into law:
Course Marking/Flagging – Requires institutions of higher education to indicate the cost of course materials for students in course listings for the sake of transparency. One example is AB 607 which requires that institutions prominently display the estimated course materials costs for no less than 75 percent of the classes listed in their online course schedule.
Appropriation of Funding – These bills typically allot financial support to a state Open Educational Resource related initiatives or programs. California Senate Bill 101 appropriated $3M to the California Community Colleges to provide textbooks or digital course content to incarcerated students and encouraged the use OER when possible.
Establishes a committee, program, or study – These bills create and task a group of people with a goal or purpose relevant to OER. Washington HB 1946 (passed in 2009) was an early example of such a bill, and it directed a task force to investigate open licensing options for sharing digital content with the goal of using common online learning technologies for all institutions of higher education.
Restrictions or directives for publishers – These bills are currently less common than the aforementioned categories. They require publishers to make textbook pricing transparent or direct publishers to offer the components of textbook “bundles” for sale separately. HB 33 is an example from Texas. Among other things, it requires that publishers provide written information relating to textbook prices, copyright dates for the current and three preceding textbook editions, any substantial revisions made since the most recent preceding edition, and any alternative formats available to institutions.
With legislative effort to expand textbook affordability staying the course, is there an impact to OER programs at the institutional level based upon recent budget cuts? Many institutions of higher education are facing staff reduction and program cuts so it is reasonable to assume so. For example, Oregon’s academic library community is concerned that proposed changes to accreditation language could lead to a reduction in library staff and consequently OER efforts. “Reductions of library staff in Oregon colleges and universities is already an increasingly troubling trend as Oregon’s higher education institutions continue to grapple with budget cuts.” As another example, Dartmouth College will reportedly have over a million dollars in cuts to their libraries budget in the next two years. Textbook cost-savings efforts are often led by libraries, so these budget and staff cuts may hinder OER.
Readers may be asking the question of why do we need to invest money in OER when the goal of OER is cost-savings and the resulting materials are free? The answer is mostly time, infrastructure, and staff. OER requires humans for creation, editing, and upkeep. Digital products and services like publishing platforms are also needed in that process. Staff are needed to educate others about OER, administer course flagging systems, and develop outreach plans. Incentive programs with mini grants are an effective way to fill in some of the gaps for faculty who invest time and effort into OER adoption or creation.
Financial support for OER that comes from outside an institution’s primary funding is important because university budgets are currently shrinking. However, relying on one-off and finite grant opportunities to propel OER on the campus level is unsustainable. Thus, OER has to be considered and prioritized in administrative decisions, especially because it involves return on investment when states that conduct annual OER data collection are reporting millions of dollars in cost-savings to students.
The attention that OER advocates have earned from federal, state, and campus leadership is an undeniable victory. Top-down support, whether it is monetary or other affirming actions, has been a goal and key to OER success. However, we are dealing with deficits in the support system in the field. Do we have enough staff and librarians to continue the efforts? Will administrators making tough decisions about limited funds prioritize OER? The shared understanding of the power and the importance of OER is stronger than ever, but the funding ping-pong ball is still in play.