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President Wendler Discusses Textbook Proposal on Fox News
West Texas A&M University President Walter V. Wendler appeared on Fox News' "Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy" on Sept. 3 to discuss his plan to make WT textbook-free by 2024.
In the interview, Wendler talked about his groundbreaking proposal to ensure that students would no longer have to buy textbooks beginning with the fall 2024 semester.
Wendler announced the plan in an Aug. 24 memo to the campus.
“WT is working to be innovative in our approach to reducing debt incurred by students and their families,” Wendler said. “Technological advances in this information age are forever changing how we deliver education to students.”
WT also has aggressively pursued more open educational resource texts; in the past six years, OER utilization has risen from 5 percent to 22 percent across the University. OER materials are teaching resources that are in the public domain or are released under intellectual property licenses that permit free use, adaptation and redistribution.
If a course continues to require a textbook, the College’s dean will use WT resources to buy it for students.
Professional manuals, such as those used in nursing, engineering or writing, will be considered reference books, not textbooks, and may still be required.