Rochester Community and Technical College students will no longer be required to purchase textbooks for certain two-year programs called "Z Degrees" that will be rolled out for the first time this spring.
The change represents not only big savings for students — in the hundreds if not thousands of dollars — but is another shift in the evolving nature of higher education, said Mike Mutschelknaus, an RCTC English instructor who made Z Degrees a part of his sabbatical project.
In addition to the growing abundance of online materials available to students, the growth of textbook-less options coincides with the rise of AI-generated study guides.
"The landscape of higher education is changing. AI, online education. The traditional method of lecture and book — it's gone. This is the next move in what higher education is going to look like," Mutschelknaus said.
"Teachers are curators of content," he said.
In one sense, RCTC is jumping on the band wagon. Many RCTC students don't buy textbooks anymore even if they are required and "Google their way through college." Also a number of RCTC faculty do not require students to purchase textbooks.
Central Lake College became the first college in Minnesota to launch a zero-cost textbook program.
With the move, the 8,000-student RCTC joins 11 other Minnesota State colleges and universities that now provide Z Degree options for students. Since their inception, Z Degrees have saved students in the system $12.6 million, according to the Z Degree Report to the Legislature.
In such programs, students use a variety of online materials such as open educational resources (OER), open textbooks and library-curated materials.
Officials estimate that a wide range of students will benefit from the degree, which will cover general education courses like English, sociology and psych classes. Counting faculty outside the liberal arts pathway that no longer use textbooks, officials estimate that 10 percent of the 500 courses offered at RCTC are open-sourced.
The option for students to go textbook-less will be made available for those registering for spring semester classes. Students will click a button on the registration page to indicate their preference for going without them.
The option could represent a competitive disadvantage for faculty who continue to rely on textbooks. If the costs are small or nominal, it might not matter. But if the choice is between zero cost and spending as much as $200 or more, "that professor is going to see an impact," Mutschelknaus said.
Officials don't believe the trend will lead to the demise of campus bookstores any time soon. There are many courses, such as nursing, where textbooks won't be going the way of the dodo bird.
Still, cost has become a beleaguering issue for higher education for years now, as costs have soared and many graduates are saddled with huge debt. RCTC serves a number of low-income students where cost is a hyper-sensitive issue that can determine whether a student attends college.
"This is a trend toward affordability that is being driven by student need nationwide, and also being driven by the way students study and learn now," Mutschelknaus said. "We can offer them books now, but they might not necessarily buy them anyway."
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