BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 1052
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Date of Hearing: August 8, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
SB 1052 (Steinberg) - As Amended: August 6, 2012
Policy Committee: Higher
EducationVote:7-1
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill, subject to future funding, provides for the
development of low-cost digital textbooks for the 50 most widely
taken lower division courses across the state's public
postsecondary education segments. Specifically, this bill:
1)Establishes a California Open Education Resources Council
(COERC), composed of three faculty members each from the
University of California (UC), the California State University
(CSU), and the California Community Colleges (CCC), to be
administered by the Intersegmental Committee of the Academic
Senates of the UC, CSU, and CCC.
2)Requires the COERC to:
a) Develop a list of the 50 most widely taken lower
division courses across the three segments.
b) Create and administer a review and approval process for
open source materials.
c) Promote strategies for production, access, and use of
open source materials.
d) Require publishers of textbooks used in the 50 courses,
as a condition of purchasing those books by a UC, CSU, or
CCC campus bookstore, to provide at least three copies, at
no cost, for placement on reserve at the campus library.
e) Establish a competitive request for proposal process
whereby faculty, publishers, and other interested parties
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may apply for funds to produce, in 2013, the 50 open source
textbooks and related materials, meeting specified
requirements and be submitted to the California Open Source
Digital Library.
3)Requires the Council to submit a progress report on
implementing all of the above by July 1, 2014 and a final
report by January 1, 2016.
4)States that all of the above is operative only if sufficient
funding is provided in the Budget Act, another statute, and/or
through federal or private funds.
5)Finds that a $25 million state-led investment in OER can
provide students with textbooks and related materials for free
online or for about $20 per hardcopy.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)Staff will be needed for several years to support the Council
in fulfilling its responsibilities. Assuming at least one
professional and one support position, plus travel and meeting
expenses for Council members, annual costs of about $200,000
plus around $250,000 in faculty release time for Council
members.
2)Development costs for the 50 open source textbooks are
unknown, but will constitute the majority of the anticipated
$25 million cost of implementing this bill.
3)Costs to process, catalog, and manage the circulation of three
copies of the textbooks for the 50 courses at campus libraries
would about $200,000 in the first year and $30,000 per year
thereafter.
4)Campus bookstores will incur staff costs to verify publisher's
compliance with the reserve book requirement prior to ordering
a textbook for one of the 50 most-widely taken courses.
Statewide this cost could total several hundred thousand
dollars annually.
5)To the extent that students were previously purchasing
textbooks for the 50 courses from sales tax-generating
businesses, widespread use of this open source option will
significantly reduce this revenue. There will likewise be a
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substantial revenue loss to campus bookstores, which often
support other campus activities.
6)To the extent a significant reduction in textbook costs for
lower division students makes college more affordable, some
students, particularly at the community colleges, might be
able to take a greater unit load per semester, thus reducing
the time necessary to complete their education, to the benefit
of the student, the institution, and the state.
COMMENTS
1)Purpose . According to the author, the cost of textbooks
represents a significant burden to students and families,
citing a recent CSU report estimating that CSU students pay
approximately $1,000 per year for textbooks. The author also
notes a finding by the CCC Academic Senate that the cost of
educational materials has become a "visible barrier to college
attendance for many students." This bill attempts to address
those costs for the 50 most common lower division courses by
enabling instructional materials for those courses to be
available through Open Education Resources.
2)Open Education Resources (OERs) are educational materials such
as textbooks, research articles, videos, assessments, or
simulations that are either licensed under an open copyright
license or are in the public domain. OERs provide no-cost
access and no-cost permission to revise, reuse, remix, or
redistribute the materials. According to a policy brief by the
Center for American Progress and EDUCAUSE, digital OERs offer
many advantages over traditional textbooks, by allowing
students and faculty to access textbooks and related materials
for free online or to purchase hardcopies that are more
affordable than traditional textbooks, enabling faculty to
customize learning materials to suit their course objectives,
and providing students with a more flexible set of tools that
can contribute to a richer learning experience.
3)Related Legislation . SB 1053 (Steinberg), also on today's
committee agenda, establishes the California Digital Open
Source Library, for the purpose of housing the open source
materials created through SB 1052. SB 1053 only becomes
operative if SB 1052 is enacted.
SB 1052
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Analysis Prepared by : Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081