Free Textbook Platform OpenStax Reducing College Costs.

Diverse Education (8/6) runs an article describing the Rice University nonprofit initiative OpenStax, launched in 2012 “to provide free textbooks and digital resources.” The program “is growing and helping to impact the cost of a college education.” Rice “recently announced that more than 2.2 million students and nearly half of U.S. colleges are using the service this year to save about $177 million – helping OpenStax surpass its goal early of saving students $500 million in textbook costs by 2020.” High schools and colleges of all sizes are using the program. “A recent study by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) found that the average textbook costs from around the nation are decreasing for the first time in 50 years. Some say the change is due partly to competition from alternatives such as OpenStax.”

Link to OpenStax