Statements On Introduced Bills And Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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By Mr. DURBIN:

S. 1714. A bill to authorize grants for the creation, update, or adaption of open textbooks, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, technology has transformed the way we work, the way we entertain ourselves, and the way we understand the world around us. But one area of our lives that has been more resistant to technological change has been the way we educate our children. And yet I see tremendous potential in technology to improve access to education and decrease its often high costs. One example of this is open educational resources. Today, I am introducing a bill that will provide a short-term federal investment in the development of one type of open educational resource--college textbooks. I believe this investment will improve learning in our college classrooms and help bring down the cost of college for students.

The growth of the Internet has enabled the creation and sharing of open content. A teacher or professor in Illinois can create a lecture, a lesson, a book, or an entire curriculum and share it online. A teacher across the country or even across the world can access that educational material, adapt it, and use it in his or her classroom. More and more often educators are utilizing technology in this way to improve student learning.

The President recognizes the potential of this new technology. He has proposed a significant new Federal investment in the creation of online open-source courses for community colleges. These courses will be made freely available online and widely distributed so that all colleges can make use of them. I believe this initiative will help make higher education more accessible for students, especially non-traditional students or students living in rural areas far away from brick-and-mortar institutions. Because the courses will be available for free, the initiative will also help bring down the high cost of a college education for students struggling to pay.

I think we can go even further. The high cost of textbooks continues to be a barrier for many students struggling to pay for college. The College Board reported that for the 2007 to 2008 school year, students spent an estimated $805 to $1,229 on books and supplies. A little over a year ago, the Higher Education Opportunity Act was signed into law. That law includes provisions that I authored to increase transparency in college textbook pricing for professors and students. I hope that new law will help decrease the high cost of textbooks when these provisions are enacted next year, but there is more that the Federal Government can do to provide cheap alternatives to professors and students.

The bill I am introducing today, the Open College Textbook Act, will create a grant program for the creation of freely-available, online open college textbooks. Making high-quality open textbooks freely available to the general public would significantly lower college textbook costs. Under my bill, the Secretary of Education would award grants to colleges, professors, nonprofit organizations or for-profit companies to create introductory-level college textbooks. Once produced, these books would be posted on an easily-accessible website and made available to students, professors, and the public for free. The result would be a set of high-quality college textbooks that could be adopted in any introductory course at any college in the country. This would be a limited investment of Federal grant funding over just a few years, not a permanent federal funding stream. The choice would ultimately still be the professor's. Each professor could choose whether to assign the open textbook to his class, but I hope that he would seriously consider this high-quality, free online option that would save his students $150 or $200 each at the college bookstore.

Along with the clear cost benefits, open textbooks can also improve teaching and learning. The content of an open textbook can be adapted, supplemented, and personalized by professors for their course. Instead of framing a course around a textbook, a professor can modify an open textbook to fit the needs of a particular course or group of students. When professors take advantage of the flexibility and adaptability of open textbooks, student learning improves.

The use of Federal funding for textbooks and curricula is not new. For years, the National Science Foundation has been awarding grants to professors for research into the improvement of learning in the classroom. Sometimes these grants have resulted in the creation of textbooks, which the author can then license for profit to a commercial publisher. I believe textbooks created with Federal funding should be made available for free so that all students and professors can benefit from our investment. This bill would also require that all future Federal grants that lead to the creation of a textbook or curriculum for use in the classroom be licensed openly and made freely available to all educators for their use.

Over the past decade, I have watched textbook publishers use technology to drive up the cost of textbooks through unnecessary online supplements and CD-ROMs. It is time that we use the potential of technology to improve college access, learning, and affordability for all students. I believe the Open College Textbook Act that I am introducing today will accomplish that goal.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record

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