# Plain Language Summary: No Cost Educational Resources Act of 2023

This bill creates a new grant program to help colleges and universities offer courses that use only free, publicly available digital textbooks and reading materials instead of expensive textbooks students have to buy. Right now, many students pay hundreds of dollars per semester for required textbooks—sometimes more than $300 per book. This bill would give federal grants to colleges that develop and teach science, technology, engineering, and math courses using materials that are free to download and share online. The goal is to reduce what students pay for education while maintaining the quality of their coursework.

To get these grants, colleges would need to work with their librarians and faculty to find, adapt, or create free digital materials that work just as well as traditional textbooks. The bill specifically encourages colleges to prioritize this work if they serve a lot of low-income or minority students—the groups most hurt by expensive textbook costs. Colleges would also need to show they're collaborating with other schools to share these free materials more widely across higher education, and they'd have to prove the materials are actually good quality.

The bill requires the federal government to report back within two years on how well the program works. They'll measure whether more colleges are using free materials, how many students are taking these courses, and how much money students actually save compared to buying traditional textbooks. This gives Congress concrete data to decide whether to expand the program or make changes. For students, especially those struggling to afford college, this could mean significant savings and easier access to course materials without sacrificing educational quality.

No Cost Educational Resources Act of 2023

Foster, Bill

No Cost Educational Resources Act of 2023 This bill authorizes the Institute of Museum and Library Services to award grants to institutions of higher education (IHEs) for facilitating the adoption, adaption, and creation of open educational reading materials and establishing more open educational reading material courses. Open educational reading material refers to a free digital text that is publicly available to be downloaded and redistributed. Open educational reading material course refers to a science, technology, engineering, or math course offered by an IHE that uses only open educational reading materials as the form of the required readings for the course.