Additional Information

Federal and California state initiatives to address high textbook costs for higher education students.

Federal Support

Federal Higher Education Opportunity Act (2008)
“SEC. 133. TEXTBOOK INFORMATION.
‘‘(a) PURPOSE AND INTENT.—The purpose of this section is to ensure that students have access to affordable course materials by decreasing costs to students and enhancing transparency and disclosure with respect to the selection, purchase, sale, and use of course materials. It is the intent of this section to encourage all of the involved parties, including faculty, students, administrators, institutions of higher education, bookstores, distributors, and publishers, to work together to identify ways to decrease the cost of college textbooks and supplemental materials for students while supporting the academic freedom of faculty members to select high quality course materials for students.

For current information on state and federal support of Zero Textbook Cost and Open Educational Resources please visit:

• SPARC*
• California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office
• US Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology

CA State Support

• AB 2385 (2018): Existing state law urges textbook publishers to take specified actions aimed at reducing the amounts that students pay for textbooks, including providing to faculty and departments considering textbook orders a list of all the different products the publisher sells. Amendment on 3/19/2018: The amendment would urge textbook publishers to post in a prominent location on their Internet websites, among other things, a detailed description of how the newest edition differs from the previous edition. The bill would authorize the Assembly Higher Education Committee and the Senate Committee on Education to field complaints from students about textbooks for which the publishers’ websites do not contain the described information and would authorize either committee, or both committees to forward the most egregious cases to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee for investigation.
• SB 840 (2018): This higher education budget bill includes a provision that provides up to $3,000,000 funding in each fiscal year to the California Community Colleges to provide textbooks or digital course content to inmates under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation who are enrolled in one or more California Community College courses. To the extent possible, community college districts providing textbooks or digital course content are encouraged to first use open educational resources.
• AB 1809 (2018): Budget Act of 2018: Among other provisions, this bill would appropriate $6,000,000 from the General Fund to the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges for the 2018-19 fiscal year to support the development of, and expansion of the use of, open educational resources for the California Community Colleges. The bill would require the Academic Senate for the California Community Colleges to submit a report, including specified data related to the progress of supporting and expanding the use of open educational resources pursuant to the bill. This bill also establishes the California Online Community College and requires the college to utilize and leverage the programs and activities of the chancellor’s office, including the Zero-Textbook-Cost Degree Grant Program and Open Educational Resources.
• AB 97/SB 72 (2017): an appropriations bill that allows funding to be used for increased services for high-needs students, which may include the development of open educational resources and zero-textbook-cost degrees that reduce costs for students. Community college districts utilizing resources for this purpose are encouraged to first develop open educational resources and zero-textbook-cost degrees for courses that are transferable to other schools within the state.
• SB 1359 (2016): Requires each campus of the California Community Colleges and the California State University, and would request each campus of the University of California, to identify in the online version of the campus course schedule its courses that exclusively use digital course materials, as specified, and communicate to students that the course materials for these courses are free of charge and therefore not required to be purchased.
• AB 798 (2015): Creates the Open Educational Resources Adoption Incentive Fund to provide incentives and reward campus, staff, and faculty efforts to accelerate the adoption of open educational resources. The purpose of this bill was to reduce textbook costs for college students and encourage faculty to accelerate the adoption of lower cost, high-quality open educational resources.
• SB 1052 (2012): Established the California Open Education Resources Council. The bill required the Council to determine a list of 50 lower division courses in the public postsecondary segments for which high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and related materials would be developed or acquired. The bill required the council to review and approve developed open source materials, promote strategies for production, access, and use, and regularly solicit and consider feedback from each of the statewide student associations.
• SB 1053 (2012): Established the California Digital Open Source Library, under the administration of the California State University, in coordination with the California Community Colleges, 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. The bill required that materials in the library bear a creative commons attribution license that allows others to use, distribute, and create derivative works based upon the digital material while still allowing the authors or creators of the material to receive credit for their efforts.