Students save big at Kwantlen with 'no textbook cost' arts degree
Credit to Author: Nick Eagland| Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2019 22:41:08 +0000
Kwantlen Polytechnic University has launched a full degree in which students pay nothing for textbooks, the first of its kind in North America, according to the school.
KPU, which runs courses online and at campuses in Surrey, Richmond, Langley and Cloverdale, is now offering a “zero textbook cost” (ZTC) bachelor’s of arts degree in general studies. The four-year, 120-credit university degree is the seventh ZTC credential offered at the university, which has been a leader in open education.
Rather than spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks each semester, students instead access open educational resources such as online textbooks and library materials, written by KPU instructors and faculty from other institutions.
Students in the degree program will save an average of just over $5,000 during their four years of study, said Rajiv Jhangiani, associate vice-provost for open education at KPU. An estimated 27,500 students in ZTC courses have saved more than $3.1 million combined since the spring 2018 semester.
“The entire university is pulling behind this, not just the faculty but the staff as well,” Jhangiani said. “It’s a question of access and making sure all of the students have access to the required readings, and they’re not having to choose between groceries and textbooks.”
Jhangiani said KPU was keen to expand its ZTC offerings after he and a colleague led provincewide research into textbook affordability. They found that 54 per cent of B.C. undergraduates were not buying at least some of the required course textbooks due to cost, and just over a quarter were choosing or withdrawing from courses due to those costs.
“We further found that students who were first in the family to attend university, students of colour, or holding a loan were more likely to make these choices,” Jhangiani said.
An introductory physics course in 2012 was first to drop textbook costs at KPU. Now, students can choose from more than 700 courses with no textbook cost, Jhangiani said. KPU’s ZTC credentials also include an associate of arts degrees in general studies or sociology, a diploma in general studies, certificates in arts or foundations in design, and an adult graduation diploma.
Rajiv Jhangiani, associate vice provost, open education at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Tuition fees for full-time, undergraduate programs in Canada averaged $6,838 in 2018-2019, up 3.3 per cent from the previous academic year, according to Statistics Canada.
But textbook costs are rising at three to four times the rate of inflation, leaving students with sticker shock when they visit the campus book store, said Jhangiani. Meantime, textbook publishers release new editions with only minor cosmetic improvements in order to stamp out the used textbook market, he added.
Along with the cost savings, open textbooks allow faculty to localize and customize materials, and make them interactive. They are now being used by roughly 95 per cent of B.C. post-secondary institutions, Jhangiani said.
“For us, this is a very important strategy to make university even more affordable,” he said. “For our faculty, we’re able to do things with teaching and learning with openly-licensed materials that we could never do with commercial resources. So there’s a fair bit of teaching and learning innovation.”
Jhangiani said KPU will continue to expand the program.