College tuition is expensive enough - but then there is the ridiculously high cost of buying text books.

A new state-sponsored program hopes to save students that expense by offering educational materials through the Open Course Library. At most, a student would pay $30.

"Student are paying $1,000 or more in just textbooks," says Tom Caswell. "At our community colleges tuition is around $3,600; you add another thousand for text books, it's a big chunk."

Caswell leads the project for the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. Now, he says, the library offers all the materials online for more than 40 of the state's most popular college courses.

If all of Washington's community and technical colleges adopted the project, students would save nearly $42 million a year on textbooks.

The Open Course Library is funded by the legislature and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has plans to expand to more than 80 courses by 2013.

Ursula Reutin, 97.3 KIRO FM Reporter