The following is a message from Benjamin Koontz, the Grassroots coordinator at MaryPIRG:
My name is Benjamin Koontz and I am the Grassroots Coordinator of the MaryPIRG’s Affordable Textbooks campaign. Maryland Public Interest Research Group (MaryPIRG) is a statewide nonpartisan, nonprofit, student run, student lead organization advocating to protect the environment, promote democracy, and fight homelessness. One of MaryPIRG’s campaigns is affordable higher education, and this semester we are focusing on the costs of textbooks. Textbook prices in the US have increased more than 800% since the 1978, rising faster than even medical costs. This has resulted in students spending an average of $1250 on textbooks, and other supplementary learn tools, every year. Students commonly resort to stealing required materials online, or forgoing them entirely.
To combat this increasingly relevant issue, MaryPIRG’s textbook campaign is organizing a March on Affordable Textbooks. Our goals are to increases awareness of the issue and to promote the use and development of open educational resources (OERs). OERs include any supplementary learning material that is free to access online, including open source textbooks. Currently there are grants such as the Maryland Open Source Textbook Initiative, incentivizing professors to adopt or develop open source textbooks. OERs have also been supported by national efforts, including the recent 5 million dollars allocated to OERs by congress thanks to PIRG efforts. Even with this progress, more incentives for professors and department heads to develop and adopt these open resources is required to stop students from paying thousands of dollars for books, stealing materials, or not having access to materials at all.
In an attempt to raise awareness about the issue and bring about further use of OERs, MaryPIRG is hosting a March on Affordable Textbooks this Friday, May 6th, from Hornbake plaza to McKeldin library, starting at 1pm. Every student counts, so we would appreciate your support!
Feel free to email/text/call me to answer any questions,
Benjamin Koontz
MaryPIRG Textbooks Grassroots Coordinator
University of Maryland Class of 2020