Introduction

When we talk about the cost of course materials at Oregon’s universities, how much money are we really talking about? Open Oregon Educational Resources used a standard methodology to gather locally relevant cost data that could be compared across institutions. This data establishes a baseline for comparison with future findings.

Key research findings:

The statewide average cost of course materials for the top three four-year degrees at each university is $3,551, or $19.32 per credit.
The overall statewide average of the cost of course materials for general education requirements at each university is $1,274.91, or $18.83 per credit.
The average lowest-cost general education pathway identified with the no-cost/low-cost schedule designation is $333.01, or $4.92 per credit.

Background

In 2015, Open Oregon Educational Resources used a research method conceived by Quill West, Pierce College’s Open Education Project Manager, and refined by Nicole Allen, Director of Open Education at SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition, to gather baseline data on the cost of textbooks for transfer degrees at Oregon’s community colleges.

The 2015 blog post from the beginning of this project, titled Why do we need this research?, proposed that Oregon needs local data in order to understand the scope of the problem that our textbook affordability program has set out to solve. The study in the colleges has now been conducted three times:

Repeating the same research method over time, it is possible not only to make a consistent cost comparison, but also to show an encouraging trend of falling course material costs in Oregon’s colleges, as shown below. The present study will enable us to track trends in Oregon’s universities in the future.

Statewide average cost of materials for AAOT and ASOT-BUS degrees (averaging the high and low materials costs for the degree) in the three years that data were gathered. For the AAOT, the statewide average in 2015 was $2142.84; in 2017 it was $1810.26; in 2019 it was $1492.15. For the ASOT-BUS, the statewide average in 2015 was $2316.19; in 2017 was $1956.24; in 2019 was $1575.39. The lowest cost degree pathway through the AAOT requirements in 2017 was $461.48 and in 2019 was $381.24.

The data supporting the conclusions presented here can be found in the 2019 Aggregate Statewide Data – Universities spreadsheet. Data for each university is available in the appendix (available in the full report), and the course/bookstore data for each university is available upon request.