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"In an effort to reduce costs for students, the College of Education and Human Development has created this catalog of open textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members. Open textbooks are complete textbooks released under a Creative Commons, or similar, license. Instructors can customize open textbooks to fit their course needs by remixing, editing, and adding their own content. Students can access free digital versions or purchase low-cost print copies of open textbooks."

"Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University has encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls."

The smart funders will work with the pre-existing prejudice of researchers, probably granting copyright and IP rights to the researchers, but placing tighter constraints on the terms of forward licensing. That funders don't really need the publishers has been made clear by HHMI, Wellcome Trust, and the MPI. Publishing costs are a small proportion of their total expenditure. If necessary they have the resources and will to take that in house. The NIH has taken a similar route though technically implemented in a different way. Other funders will allow these experiments to run, but ultimately they will adopt the approaches that appear to work.

"Open access is framed as a moral issue, but it's actually a business one. Arguments that tax-payer funded research should be publicly accessible can seem obvious; but what if tax-payer funding is not available or is not adequate to cover the costs-as is usually the case in the arts and humanities?"

"For many, "open textbooks" seem to be primarily about cost savings, about saving money for both funders and learners, but not particularly about challenging the "form" of what we have known as a textbook. And I agree, affordability is a strong motivator to get into this space, and an obvious selling point for all the stakeholders (well, almost all - commercial publishers don't seem exactly thrilled about it.)"

There is a growing premium placed on data related to student performance, progress to degree, and prospects after graduation. These measures relative to the cost of attendance seems to equal value these days.  

"WGU President Robert W. Mendenhall testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on February 2, 2012, at a hearing on improving college affordability in the United States. Dr. Mendenhall was one of four higher education leaders who, along with U.S. Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter, spoke of the need to combat the rising cost of a college education."

"While existing laws, business models, and outdated educational practices make it difficult for teachers and learners to leverage the full power of the Internet to access high-quality, affordable learning materials, OER can be freely copied and shared (and revised and remixed) without breaking the law."