City University of New York is the leading urban public university in the U.S. With the first college founded in New York City in 1847, the University today comprises 24 institutions. CUNY provides high-quality, accessible education for more than 275,000 degree seeking students and over 218,000 adult, continuing education and professional education students throughout New York City’s five counties. For many students at CUNY, the cost of textbooks can be prohibitively expensive. Since nearly 40% of CUNY’s students come from households with annual incomes of less than $20,000, spending an average of $1,200 per year on books and other supplies is too often an insurmountable barrier to academic success. CUNY’s Office of Library services, which supports the 32 libraries, has been concerned with textbook affordability for some years now and with the growth of the OER movement has embraced OER as the most viable solution. Recent efforts across CUNY have contributed to institutionalizing OER on a large scale across the campuses. Our involvement with the Achieving the Dream (ATD) OER Degree Initiative, a funding effort across 38 community colleges nationwide, has given us the opportunity to raise awareness. Earlier this year New York State funded the university $4 million dollars for OER and through this we are able to broaden the reach. Lessons learned from ATD including our partnership with Lumen Learning as a technical provider and mentor and participation as a research partner in a study on the project has helped shape methodology and practice. The short-term goal is to reduce costs for students and accelerate their progress through college, but an important secondary impact is to change the culture to that better connect curriculum and pedagogy to updated student learning outcomes. OER is bringing a quiet revolution of innovation in the pedagogy of higher education in the U.S.
