Textbook Broke: Textbook Affordability as a Social Justice Issue
Jenkins, J. Jacob · Sánchez, Luis A. · Schraedley, Megan A. K. · Hannans, Jaime · Navick, Nitzan · Young, Jade
Published | 11 May 2020 |
Journal | Journal of Interactive Media in Education Volume 2020, Issue 1, Pages 3 |
Country | United States, North America |
ABSTRACT
In light of rising textbook prices, open education resources (OER) have been shown to decrease non-tuition costs, while simultaneously increasing academic access, student performance, and time-to-graduation rates. Yet very little research to date has explored OER’s specific impact on those who are presumed to benefit most from this potential: historically underserved students. This reality has left a significant gap of understanding in the current body of literature, resulting in calls for more empirically-based examinations of OER through a social justice lens. For each of these reasons, this study explored the impact of OER and textbook pricing among racial/ethnic minority students, low-income students, and first-generation college students at a four-year Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in Southern California. Drawing upon more than 700 undergraduate surveys, our univariate, bivariate and multivariate results revealed textbook costs to be a substantial barrier for the vast majority of students. However, those barriers were even more significant among historically underserved college students; thus, confirming textbook affordability as a redistributive justice issue, and positing OER as a potential avenue for realizing a more socially just college experience.Keywords | OER · open education resources · student equity · redistributive justice · Hispanic Serving Institution |
Language | English |
Refereed | Yes |
Rights | CC BY |
DOI | 10.5334/jime.549 |
Export options | BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar |
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