(WWL.com) -- The Louisiana Board of Regents will award grants to ten college campuses in an effort to reduce textbooks for students. Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Communication Meg Casper Sunstrom says the total amount distributed is $67,500.
“We estimate that during the three-year cycle, we can save more than a million dollars over those three years for about 15,000 students,” said Sunstrom.
Nicholls and Grambling State were two four-year universities to receive the grant money, the rest of the dollars will go towards community college campuses.
Casper Sunstrom says text book costs can sometimes be a factor in whether a student is successful in a course.
“By giving these grants to the schools that we’ve selected, it allows them to redesign their courses and look at ways they can adopt things like open textbooks or electronic textbooks,” said Sunstrom.
Sunstrom says they believe this effort could save more than one-million dollars over three years for 15,000 students and they plan to track the results
“Seeing how well they are doing in terms of retention and individual graduation, also looking at the amount of savings that they’ve had by having these open resources,” said Sunstrom.