A faculty-centered initiative to make learning more affordable, expand equitable access, and spark thoughtful teaching innovation across CSU. We partner with faculty, working together to discover, adapt, create, and share open educational resources that benefit students, strengthen teaching, and extend CSU’s impact beyond the classroom.
Affordable Learning @ CSU is a university-wide effort to reduce barriers to student success by expanding access to low- and no-cost course materials in response to the rising cost of textbooks. We work with faculty, departments, and campus partners to support flexible, sustainable approaches to affordability that improve day-one access, teaching options, and student outcomes. Together, we build momentum, share examples, and make affordability efforts visible and sustainable over time.
From idea to implementation, we support you as you turn concern about textbook costs into practical coursework. Our grants, workshops, and expertise provide workable options empowering faculty to connect course design decisions with student success, pedagogical innovation, and professional visibility.
Our focus is on you and your students. Authoring, adapting, or adopting open textbooks, using library-licensed materials, or a combination of approaches...the goal is not one model for every class, but the best educational and financial outcome for students.
Teamwork is essential to the success of this initiative. Collaborators involved in this initiative include the Michael Schwartz Library, College of Law Library, Center for eLearning, Center for Faculty Excellence, Center for Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, and Student Government Association, with ongoing support from the Provost's Office.
These pathways for faculty, departments, and campus leaders are designed to keep affordable learning work manageable and clear, with options for beginning, expanding, or coordinating efforts across courses and programs.
Find applications, deadlines, and grant requirements here, along with support to find, adopt, or adapt an existing open educational textbook or other education resources to replace a traditional, high-cost textbook. These grants have already supported projects that have saved CSU students more than $2 million.
Co-sponsored by the Michael Schwartz Library and the Student Government Association, the Textbook Hero Award is awarded annually to honor faculty leadership and to celebrate the culture of affordability taking shape across CSU.
The Affordability Advocates research guide is a regularly updated hub for events, workshops, calls for participation, and other ways to connect with CSU’s thriving affordable learning community.
Video, brief faculty profiles, sample courses, and practical examples that show how your colleagues are already using open and affordable materials in their teaching.
Faculty across CSU are already showing what affordable learning can look like in practice: thoughtful, creative, and student-centered...one course and one faculty idea at a time.
“[Using an OER] saves my students approximately $25,000 every academic year. My students are better prepared because they have the book and I can teach more efficiently because I know everyone has the material. The success rates in my course are now consistently over 90% (C or higher) and students frequently take additional theatre courses because they had such a good experience. It really is a win-win situation.”
- Lisa Bernd, Theatre & Dance
“Several students have expressed gratitude for the free textbook. I used to see one or two students falter or drop during the semester when the free Connect access expired. That did not happen with the OER textbook!!”
- Candice Vander Weerdt, Marketing
“The results [of switching to an OER] were better than anyone expected. When compared to control courses offered during the same semester, the course with module-based learning and an open textbook produced more A’s and B’s while reducing the failure rate significantly. ... The students also found that having the book from Day 1 without ordering was a major factor in getting off to a great start in the course.”
- Shawn Ryan, Math
Affordability Advocates at CSU: Your Colleagues Speak [video]
Changing Lives: Textbook Heroes
CSU is working with faculty and others across the university to develop Z-degrees, or zero-textbook-cost degree pathways, that remove financial barriers for our students, closing equity gaps and giving individual departments and schools a compelling recruitment story.
Z-degrees are zero-cost pathways to a degree, allowing students to earn a degree without paying for required textbooks or course materials. These materials can include: