BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
AB 798 (Bonilla) - College Textbook Affordability Act of 2015.
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|Version: July 1, 2015 |Policy Vote: ED. 7 - 0 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: No |
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|Hearing Date: August 17, 2015 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: This bill establishes, until July 1, 2020, a state
grant program to incentivize increased adoption of open
educational resources (OER) at California Community Colleges
(CCC) and the California State University (CSU) campuses.
Fiscal
Impact:
The expansion of the use of previously appropriated funds will
allow expenditure of approximately $4 million in unspent funds
from the initial appropriation to go mostly towards local
incentive grants to adopt OERs. (General Fund)
Cost pressure of $140,000 to continue to fund the California
Digital Open Source Library annually once the original
appropriation is depleted. (General Fund)
Background:1) OERs are educational materials that include textbooks, research
articles, videos, assessments, or simulations that are either
AB 798 (Bonilla) Page 1 of
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licensed under an open copyright license or are in the public
domain. OERs provide no-cost access and no-cost permission to
revise, reuse, or redistribute the materials.
Existing law requires the CSU Trustees and the CCC Board of
Governors, and requests the Regents of the University of
California (UC) to work with the academic senates to encourage
faculty to give consideration to the least costly practices in
assigning textbooks and to encourage faculty to disclose to
students how new editions of textbooks are different from
previous editions.
Existing law establishes the California Digital Open Source
Library administered by the CSU, in coordination with the CCC,
for the purpose of housing open source materials while providing
an internet web-based way for students, faculty, and staff to
easily find, adopt, utilize, or modify course materials for
little or no cost. (EC § 66408)
SB 1052 (Steinberg, Chapter 621, Statutes of 2012) established
the California OER Council (Council), to develop a list of 50
lower division courses across the three segments for which
high-quality, affordable digital open source textbooks and
related material is developed or acquired, to create and
administer a review and approval process for open source
materials, and to establish a competitive request-for-proposal
process in which faculty members, publishers, and other
interested parties would apply for funds to produce 50
high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and
related materials. An appropriation of $5 million was provided
for this effort, to be matched by non-state funds.
Proposed Law:
This bill establishes the College Textbook Affordability Act
of 2015 to reduce costs for college students by encouraging
faculty to accelerate the adoption of OERs.
This bill establishes the Open Educational Resources Adoption
Incentive Fund to provide incentives and reward campus and
faculty efforts to accelerate adoption of open educational
resources. Moneys in this fund are required to be used by the
CCC and the CSU for the following purposes related to OERs:
AB 798 (Bonilla) Page 2 of
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Professional development;
Curating activities;
Curriculum modification; and
Technology support for faculty, students, and staff.
A CSU or CCC campus may develop a plan that describes evidence
of the campus's commitment and readiness to effectively spend
grant money from the fund to support faculty adoption of OERs.
The plan must include various components tsuch as: goals for
three years that focus on reducing costs for the students and
increasing the adoption of OERs; the use of available OERs; and
an assessment of the costs for students to purchase OER course
materials. A campus may submit the plan to Council for an
initial grant from the fund.
The Council is required to review plans and can approve up to
100 plans per year. Initial grants must not exceed $10,000.
Campuses then receive bonus grants of $10,000 for each year of
implementation for up to three years that it meets its own
established performance benchmarks for accelerating usage of
OERs. Of each grant award, 25 percent must be matched by the
receiving campus.
This bill authorizes the use of $5 million appropriated in
existing law in the 2011-12 fiscal year for funding grants and
administrative costs of the College Textbook Affordability Act
and exempts it from the requirement to be matched by private
funds as required for the other uses of these funds. Of this
amount, up to $140,000 annually is to support the California
Digital Open Source Library (COOL4Ed) to continue developing and
updating its services to provide faculty, staff, and students
convenient access to free and open sources materials and for
administrative activities to support the Council.
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The Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates is required to
report to the Legislature each year beginning in 2018 as to
whether grants are increasing the rate of adoption of open
educational resources and decreasing textbook costs for
students.
Related
Legislation: SB 1052 (Steinberg, Chapter 621, Statutes of 2012)
created the California OER Council to identify 50 courses where
OERs could be created or identified in order to reduce costs for
students.
SB 1053 (Steinberg, Chapter 622, Statutes of 2012) created the
California Digital Open Source Library to provide OERs in one
central location.
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