Cal State LA participates in the CSU system-wide Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) campaign, which is "designed to enable faculty to choose and provide quality educational content that is more affordable for their students." The mission of this program is to make higher education more accessible to students by promoting the use of high-quality, free and low-cost learning materials: "CSU students typically pay over $800 per year for their books. By reducing their expenses, we believe we can provide better access to a quality CSU learning experience." (AL$)
An important way faculty are lowering costs for students is the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) which are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.”