[originaltext] Rapper Kanye West went to the social media website Twitter in

Rapper Kanye West went to the social media website Twitter in February to share his views on the cost of textbooks. ’’Education puts Americans into debt before they even get a chance to get started,’’ he wrote.
    ’’We have to lower the price of textbooks. ’’
    The Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, gathers information on labor and the economy in the U. S. BLS information shows that from January 1977 to June 2015, the cost of university textbooks increased by 1,024 percent. This increase is at three times the rate of normal inflation.
    Within a few hours of West writing his comments on Twitter, Tidewater Community College in Hampton Roads, Virginia responded. ’’We got you,’’ the school wrote on its Twitter account. ’’The nation’s first text-book-free degree. ’’Tidewater began offering what it calls a ’’Z-degree’’ in 2013. Z-degree stands for ’’zero-text-books. ’’The two-year degree program provides students with an associate’s degree in business administration.
    Students in the Z-degree program do not have to pay for any of the required course materials. All of the required materials come from open educational resources, or OER. OER are free educational materials anyone can use for any purpose. Creators of OER do not ask for a copyright or exclusive use of the content.
    The Student Public Interest Research Groups, called Student PIRGs, are a group of non-profit organizations that work with college students. Student PIRGs help students study and try to solve issues in higher education. Student PIRGs surveyed more than 5,000 college students about the cost of textbooks for a report called ’’Covering the Cost. ’’The report found that almost 30 percent of students surveyed spent financial aid on textbooks. The report also argued one of the main reasons for high prices is because five companies own 80 percent of the textbook publishing industry. With little competition, the companies can set the price at whatever they want.
    Marisa Bluestone is the Director of Communications for the American Association of Publishers, or AAP. She notes that the Student PIRGs report says its own research is ’’unscientific. ’’She also argues that the information from Student PIRGs and the BLS is unclear. ’’When they’re measuring the cost of textbooks, they’re looking at the traditional books. They’re not including in their calculations the digital materials and the other options that students are using...’’
    David Anderson is the Executive Director for the AAP. He says that for-profit publishers work hard to reduce cost. ’’I don’t know of any other participant in higher education that can claim that they’re cutting their costs in half. ’’University of Maryland University College, or UMUC, is another school that uses OER to help its 84,000 students reduce costs. All of the school’s undergraduate courses became textbook-free in fall 2015.
    Kara Van Dam is the vice provost at UMUC. She argues that the publishing industry does not do enough to help students.
23. Which of the following statements is not true?
24. What do we learn about OER?
25. What do we learn about the textbook publishers?