Tidewater Community College (TCC), with branches in
Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, VA, is planning to offer an
associate of science degree program in business administration that won’t
require the purchase of any textbooks. The school says it’s the first program
of its kind and could reduce the cost of the degree by a third.
“I think we have a responsibility as a college to do
what we can to help control the costs of textbooks, because we know there are
students who can’t afford them,” Daniel T. DeMarte, TCC vice president for
academic affairs and chief academic officer told eCampus News.
“We know there are students who are not successful because they can’t afford
them.”
The fall pilot will use open educational resources
(OER) instead of traditional textbooks, a move the college estimates will save
students who complete the degree about $2,000. Additional academic advising
will also be made available to students in the OER courses.
“When a student hears it’s a textbook-free course, that doesn’t mean they don’t have to read,” said Kimberly Bovee, associate vice
president for strategic learning initiatives at TCC. “That doesn’t mean they
don’t have to engage in the course material and maybe read even more than
they’re used to.”
Virginia State University, Petersburg, already uses
open digital textbooks in all of the core courses in its business program,
while the state community college system is trying to expand the OER courses
offered through grants to instructors who develop material for high-enrollment
classes that can be shared across the system.
“I think it’s one of the biggest rip-offs in this
business,” Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia community college system,
said of the cost of textbooks. “I say that not as a chancellor: I say it as a
father who just had to give his daughter 600 bucks to buy this semester’s
textbooks at a public university.”
