By Scott O’Connell, Telegram & Gazette Staff
The high cost of textbooks is an issue throughout higher education, but the problem is especially apparent at a relatively affordable school like Mount Wachusett Community College, where in some classes, at $250 or so, an assigned textbook costs more than a single credit hour. “The thing is too, those books get quickly outdated – when students bring them back to the bookstore, they can’t even get a return on it,” said Jess Mynes, the college’s assistant dean of Library and Academic Support Services. “It’s a bit of a racket.” Equipped with a new $16,235 Performance Incentive Fund grant from the state, however, Mount Wachusett is zeroing in on a potential solution for cash-strapped students: Open Educational Resources. Already being used on a small-scale on campus, Open Educational Resources are widely available, usually free academic materials online that can be assembled by college librarians and professors into curricular replacements for textbooks.
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