New Data: SPARC Documents and Reports Over $1 Billion in Savings Through Use of Open Education Resources (OER) Around the World

From a SPARC Blog PostNicole Allen:

Five years ago at the 2013 Open Education Conference, we issued a challenge to the OER community to save students $1 billion by 2018.

Over the past three months, SPARC and our member libraries have worked to document OER adoptions over time. More than 100 organizations and individuals contributed to this effort, resulting in information on OER use at more than 4000 institutions, primarily in the U.S. and Canada but also all around the world.

Today we are thrilled to share that the data show that the OER movement has saved students, parents, schools and governments at least $1 billion dollars. While we continue to process the data and numbers will eventually be higher, we have documented at least the following savings:

• U.S. & Canada Higher Ed: $921,783,169
• U.S. & Canada K-12: $45,051,066
• International: $38,500,000
• Total: $1,005,334,235

Learn More, Read the Complete Blog Post by Nicole Allen

See Also: Students Save $1 Billion Web Page

A Few Recent OER-Related Items 

• New Research Resources: SUNY Geneseo’s Milne Library Announces Official Launch of OASIS, an OER Search Too
  Over 160,000 resources.

• OER/Open Textbooks: LibreTexts Awarded $5 Million Federal OER Pilot Program Grant

• U.S. Congress Renews $5 Million Open Textbook Pilot For Second Year