Tertiary Students’ perspectives on the cost of textbooks

Abstract

The topic of increasing tertiary education costs and student debt is a global concern. In addition tuition is only one component of educational costs with living and learning resource costs adding to this. The rising costs of textbooks in countries like the USA and Britain has been of particular note in adding to this burden. One way of mitigating these pressures is Open Textbooks (OT) . However adoption of OT’s and Open Educational Resources (OER’s) is still low. This paper explores tertiary students perspectives on the cost of textbooks, their familiarity with OT’s and OER, particularly the impact this has on students’ learning behaviour, including choice of programme and/or institution, and how students access and use course materials.