Textbook Costs and Open Educational Resources in Core A

Abstract

Adoption of no-cost text options by the Department of Rhetoric and Language for Core A courses could save University of San Francisco students up to $250,000 per year. The cost of new, bookstore-purchased textbooks for a USF student taking the most common or “normative” path through Core A (RHET 103, RHET 110/N, RHET 120) averages$316.14. Textbooks costs vary widely and are highly unpredictable: the most expensive sections can have more than 300% higher costs for books than the least expensive. A student landing in the most costly sections would spend up to $492.50 on texts required for the “normative” path ($176.36 more than the average). Costs are unevenly distributed, partly due to high variation between sections, and partly due to an unfair impact of placement practices. Students with the highest SAT scores have the lowest textbook costs. USF uses SAT scores to place students into RHET 130/131, a two-course sequence that fulfills Core A1 and A2. Students in this track would spend an average of $199.15 to buy new textbooks necessary to fulfill Core A. SATs are highly correlated with family income and family level of education; effectively, the most privileged students at USF have the lowest Core A textbook costs (see Appendix 2). Vulnerable students placed in pre-RHET 110 courses have higher textbook costs. In Spring 2018, the mean cost of new required textbooks in RHET 106/N was$80.44 (max $105.50; min$71.50). For a student placed in RHET 106 and unlucky enough to land in expensive sections, new Core A textbook costs would be almost three times higher than the cost for the average RHET 130/131 student