In light of rising textbook prices, open education resources (OER) have been shown to decrease non-tuition costs, while simultaneously increasing academic access, student performance, and time-to-graduation rates. Yet very little research to date has explored OER’s specific impact on those who are presumed to benefit most from this potential: historically underserved students. This reality has left a significant gap of understanding in the current body of literature, resulting in calls for more empirically-based examinations of OER through a social justice lens. For each of these reasons, this study explored the impact of OER and textbook pricing among racial/ethnic minority students, low-income students, and first-generation college students at a four-year Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in Southern California. Drawing upon more than 700 undergraduate surveys, our univariate, bivariate and multivariate results revealed textbook costs to be a substantial barrier for the vast majority of students. However, those barriers were even more significant among historically underserved college students; thus, confirming textbook affordability as a redistributive justice issue, and positing OER as a potential avenue for realizing a more socially just college experience.

中文翻译：

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教科书破裂：教科书负担能力作为社会正义问题

鉴于教科书价格上涨，开放教育资源（OER）已显示出可以减少非学费，同时增加学术访问，学生成绩和毕业率。但是，迄今为止，很少有研究探讨OER对那些可能从中受益最多的人的特殊影响：历史上服务不足的学生。这种现实在当前的文献中留下了巨大的理解空白，导致人们呼吁通过社会正义的视角对基于经验的OER进行更多的检验。由于上述原因，本研究探讨了南加州为期四年的西班牙裔服务机构（HSI）对种族/少数民族学生，低收入学生和第一代大学生的OER和教科书定价的影响。通过对700多个本科生的调查，我们的单变量，双变量和多变量结果表明，教科书成本是绝大多数学生的一大障碍。但是，在历史上服务欠缺的大学生中，这些障碍甚至更大。因此，确认教科书的可负担性是重新分配的正义问题，并将OER视为实现更社会公正的大学经历的潜在途径。