The Cost of Education

After reading this (and this) from Dr. Wiley this week about the reasoning behind and argument for Open Education Resources, I decided to do a little more research on two things he mentioned. One involved the the cost of textbooks and just where all that money goes for those very expensive textbooks (which we hope we can resell as soon as the classes end so that we can afford the next semester's textbooks). Dr. Wiley mentioned that the authors often are paid only a small piece for the content and scholarly reviewers often do their work for free. I created a pie graph to show where the money for that textbook actually goes. My hope in creating this to help us become more aware of the price gouging that goes on. Here is my source.

This research also made me curious about just how much money could've been saved from getting a 4-year degree if all of textbooks were OER and if all classes were online using OER. So, I researched a bit more and then created the bar graph comparing the average cost of getting a degree at several different types of 4-year colleges. I hope this helps to show how getting a college degree could be made equitable with very little changes to the current college system.

Source: 2005/2008 Government Accountability Office