BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 798
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 21, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Jose Medina, Chair
AB 798
(Bonilla) - As Amended April 6, 2015
SUBJECT: College Textbook Affordability Act of 2015
SUMMARY: Establishes the College Textbook Affordability Act of
2015 and creates the Open Educational Resources (OER) Adoption
Incentive Fund in the State Treasury. Specifically, this bill:
1)Establishes the College Textbook Affordability Act of 2015
with the goal of reducing costs for college students by
encouraging faculty to accelerate the adoption of lower cost,
high-quality, OER; specifies that faculty development shall be
a key component of this acceleration initiative; and, funding
for this measure shall be provided in the annual Budget Act.
2)Creates the OER Adoption Incentive Fund in the State Treasury
in order to provide incentives and reward campus and faculty
efforts to accelerate adoption of OER for the purpose of
reducing students' costs and improving access to quality
materials.
3)Defines the term "fund" to mean the OER Adoption Incentive
Fund.
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4)Defines "OER" to mean high-quality teaching, learning, and
research resources that reside in the public domain or have
been released under an intellectual property license that
permits their free use and repurposing by others.
5)Declares that "OER" includes, but is not limited to, a) full
courses; b) course materials; c) modules; d) textbooks; e)
streaming videos; f) tests g) software; and, h) any other
tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to
knowledge.
6)Specifies that monies in the fund shall be used by California
Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU),
and University of California (UC) campuses to create and
support faculty professional development (PD), OER curation
activities, technology support for the faculty, or some
combination thereof; and, specifies that monies in the fund
shall not be used for direct compensation for faculty members
who adopt OER.
7)Specifies that the local academic senate of a campus of the
UC, CSU, or the CCC may adopt a local campus resolution, in
collaboration with students and the administration, stating
its intent to increase access to high quality OER; and, upon
adoption of the resolution, the campus may submit the
resolution to the respective segment office for an initial
grant from the fund to establish a plan and strategy for
accelerating adoption of high-quality OER on its campus, and
developing the accompanying PD.
8)Requires the creation of the plan and strategy to be a
collaboration between the campus academic senate and the
recognized campus student body organization.
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9)Requires each plan to include three benchmarks, focusing on
reducing costs for students and increasing the adoption of
high-quality OER; and, specifies each local campus shall
determine its own benchmarks with oversight of the benchmarks
provided when the grants are approved by the respective
segment office.
10)Specifies that the strategy shall include continued access to
a hard copy of materials through the local campus bookstore
and ensure access to materials offline for students.
11)Requires the respective segment office to review and, if it
meets the requirements, as specified, approve the resolution,
and the initial grant shall be administered by the designated
segment office in collaboration with the campus president,
provost, or chief academic officer and the recognized campus
student body organization.
12)Specifies that the designated segment office for the CCC may
be the Success Center for the CCC or another appropriate
office; and, that the designated segment office for the CSU
may be the Academic Technology Services or another appropriate
office.
13)Appropriates an unknown dollar amount for the initial grant;
and, an unknown dollar amount for a bonus grant when a
campuses reaches its first, second, and third benchmark in
using OER on campus and decreasing textbook costs for students
in the first, second, and third year of implementation.
14)Specifies that the bonus grants shall be used for faculty PD,
OER curation activities, technology support for the faculty,
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or some combination thereof, administered by the local
academic senate in collaboration with the campus president,
provost, or chief academic officer and the recognized campus
student body organization.
15)Requires a grant recipient to report to its respective
segment office as to whether its benchmarks have been reached
and it is eligible for bonus grants, as specified.
16)Requires the Chancellors of the CCC and CSU, and the
President of the UC to report to the Legislature before July 1
each year as to whether the grants are increasing the rate of
adoption of OER and decreasing textbook costs for college
students.
17)Sunsets the provisions of this Act on January 1, 2021, unless
a later enacted statute, that becomes operative on or before
January 1, 2021 deletes or extends the dates.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Requires the CSU Trustees and the CCC Board of Governors, and
requests the UC Regents to work with the academic senates to
encourage faculty to give consideration to the least costly
practices in assigning textbooks; to encourage faculty to
disclose to students how new editions of textbooks are
different from previous editions; and, the cost to students
for textbooks selected, among other things. Current law also
urges textbook publishers to provide information to faculty
when they are considering what textbooks to order, and to post
information on the publishers' Web sites, including "an
explanation of how the newest edition is different from
previous editions." Publishers are also asked to disclose to
faculty the length of time they intend to produce the current
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edition and provide faculty free copies of each textbook
selected (Education Code Section 66406).
2)Creates the College Textbook Transparency Act, which, among
other things, requires faculty members and academic
departments at an institution of higher education to consider
cost in the adoption of textbooks; and, requires textbook
publishers to disclose specified information (EC Section
66406.7).
3)Requires, by January 1, 2020, publishers of textbooks used at
the UC, CSU, and the CCC, or private postsecondary educational
institutions, to the extent practicable, to make textbooks
available in whole or in part for sale in an electronic format
and requires the electronic format to contain the same content
as the printed version (EC Section 66410).
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown
COMMENTS: Background. According to the College Board, the
average undergraduate student should budget between $1,200 and
$1,300 for textbooks and supplies each year. That figure is as
much as 40 percent of tuition at a two-year community college
and 13 percent at a four-year public institution. According to
the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs),
February 2015 report, entitled "Open Textbooks: The
Billion-Dollar Solution," since 1978, college textbook costs
have increased to 812 percent, that is to say, it means that
textbook prices have increased at 3.2 times the rate of
inflation. A 2014 Student PIRG study found that 65 percent of
students skipped buying or renting a textbook because it was too
expensive, and 94 percent of those students felt that in so
doing, there grade would suffer in a course. Additionally,
almost half of the students said the cost of textbooks impacted
how many course they were able to take.
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What are OER? OER 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 2012 policy brief by the Center for
American Progress and EDUCAUSE, digital OERs offer many
advantages over traditional textbooks: they allow students and
faculty to access textbooks and related materials for free
online or purchase hardcopies that are more affordable than
traditional textbooks; they enable faculty to customize learning
materials to suit their course objectives; and, they can provide
students with a more flexible set of tools that can contribute
to a richer learning experience.
Purpose of this measure. According to the author, in order to
reduce costs for students and increase the rate of adoption of
OER, faculty need support on their local campus to help learn
about new technology available and to find the time to update
their courses in order to use OER. The author states, "AB 798
provides the funding and incentive necessary to support
professors when they choose to adopt OER. The College Textbook
Affordability Act recognizes that this support will be different
for every local campus depending on existing programs, makeup of
student body and number of professors. Each local campus can
create a plan that will specifically address the hurdles to OER
on their local campus."
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
AB 798
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California State Student Association
TechNet
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by:Jeanice Warden / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960