<p>With the costs of college textbooks approaching close to $1,000 on average per year, it's good that our educational system is finally doing something about it :)</p>
<p>After conducting a study on the affordability of college textbooks for roughly a year, a Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance has released a report on its findings and its suggested solutions.</p>
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For college students buckling under the pressure of rising textbook prices, a digital solution may soon be on the way. A report released today by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance suggests a number of short- and long-term solutions, including the creation of a national digital marketplace for textbooks, whose costs can be comparable to 20 percent of what's spent on tuition and fees at a four-year public institution.
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[quote]
In addition to the Internet marketplace, the report suggests boosting the market for used textbooks, ensuring that textbook lists and the books' identifying barcodes are posted online, creating local textbook lending libraries and rental programs, and improving financial aid available to students for textbook purchases through vouchers, credits, or loans. The report also focuses on ways Congress can help make these options happen through partnerships and incentives for states and colleges.
<p>After having skimmed the report (it's 81 pages, for pete's sake!) it's an interesting read, and if successful would be quite a blessing, especially for the lower income families for which $1,000 a year is a significant sum.</p>
<p>The used textbook market is already getting fairly efficient, and I can't imagine massive savings (as suggested in the original article) as long as the main solution is to recycle high cost books more efficiently. You can only get so many turns on a book before it is either worn out or rendered obsolete by a new version. Plus, many students prefer to retain at least some of their textbooks for future reference - this takes some out of circulation prematurely each year, ensuring the need for a steady flow of brand new, full price copies into the system.</p>
<p>I'd like to see novel technology used more effectively:</p>
<p>1) Lower cost e-books (textbook makers will still try to gouge for these, and schools need to negotiate with vigor to get costs down closer to the actual publishing costs). If not, e-books will just be profit-margin boosters for the publishers.</p>
<p>2) How about open source textbooks? Much of the Web (including CC!) runs on highly complex, technical products like Linux, Apache, and MySQL. These aren't commercial products, but rather open source software created by skilled programmers who lend their expertise at no cost. Couldn't teams of smart volunteers create textbooks in just about every area? Relatively few mass market textbooks rely on knowledge held by just a few authors.</p>
<p>3) A somewhat similar model would be a Wiki approach, perhaps with tighter controls over contribution and editing than the wide-open Wikipedia.</p>
<p>All of these presume ready access to electronic display, which today is a given on most campuses via laptops and ubiquitous computers. It will only improve as paperback-sized e-readers are refined and become major commercial products.</p>
<p>The problem with electronic textbooks is readability. People get tired reading while in the same position, hour after hour. </p>
<p>I often assign online database versions of essays. A percentage of my students, while pleased at first that I'm saving them money, end up complaining: the database is slow when they go to read, or the print is too small, or the text is larger than the browser window, or someone takes an article offline unexpectedly.</p>
<p>Because he had to wait for contracts to go throgh, get proper deals with publishers and all the things like that</p>
<p>It takes alot to be able to supply every student in America with the books they need,</p>
<p>But like i said he already has the patent and things, so if he wanted he could wait another 10 years and just make a living on duing schools like yours.</p>
<p>one of my professor (who only teaches, doesn't do research etc.) creates for most of his classes, about 400 pages of class notes that he wrote, and it costs about $12 to print it all up. While it is not really publishable quality stuff, it ties in better to what he covers than any textbook available.</p>
<p>MWFN, I agree about reading for long periods from conventional screens. Soon, I hope, viable e-readers will be available that will have a form factor and contrast levels closer to paper books. Indeed, they are talking about "electronic paper" technology. The current force in this area is Sony, whose reader has developed a small but devoted following. That unit isn't really there yet, though, in terms of mass market usability.</p>
<p>How about photocopying books from the library?</p>
<p>Photocopying a 500 page book costs roughly $20 as compared to $100 for a used textbook. And the copies can be passed on from one student generation to the next.</p>
<p>I don't know if that's compatible with American copyright laws but it's what college students usually do in Germany.</p>
<p>in America (meh..USA) thats a huge no no. People are VERY serious about copyright laws in the US and that would be a huge infringement of said laws. Most respectable copy places won't allow you to photocopy any book. Things work differently elsewhere in America (most latinamerican countries) where photocopying textbooks is an everyday thing for college students. My mom actually told me how her med school professors would actually leave the textbook at the photocopier so students could just go and request a copy of the book. But things are changing over to a more copyright aware culture and this practice is becoming less and less common ( for better or for worse).</p>
<p>yes it will cost you $20 but the time it would take to copy that many pages would be so darn long.</p>
<p>what a kid did in one of my CS classes was he went up infront of the class at the end of the first lecture. said he was collecting $2 from everybody and they should paypal to him. he would then buy the text, cut it at the bind and put it in the departments copier. the copier then feed every page through it one at a time and scanned the back and front. While doing this he made a copy but also was compiling a pdf version. So for just $2 a person he gave everybody a pdf version of the book.</p>
<p>Then we have unlimited free printing in our engineering labs, so you could just print it there.</p>
<p>My textbooks for freshmen year are about $1300!! I'm seriously contemplating getting used books for at least some of them. It's getting a bit ridiculous. But I must say, I'm not surprised. I went to private school for the last 6 years and this past year, my textbooks cost just under $600! so i must say, i'm not surprised at all.</p>
<p>If you know what classes you're taking in advance, you can usually find good deals on the textbooks online. Some books even have international versions that come in paperback if you look hard enough; those are way cheaper! Also it's a good idea to ask your professor if using an earlier edition of a textbook is acceptable, since the earlier editions can be bought for like $10. I felt like an idiot in O-Chem last year when my instructor said the 5th edition text was fine, this was after I had opened the shrink wrap on my shiny new 6th edition book, oh well.</p>
<p>for all my ap classes and summer college class I buy books online. they cost about 20 to 40 dollars at most.
the best deal I got was a ap physics book (physics for scientists and engineers), after searching the web I got mine brand new at $12 with $4 shipping.
also if you don't know which book to get beforehand, just buy at book store then return it after buying one online.</p>
<p>My freshman year books cost over $1500- used. I took 5 classes each semester and only 2 had less than 10 books required each. For many, I would just go to the library and read parts there (or get the book from the public library). Two of my courses either were totally on art or had a section where we discussed an artist, so many of my books were coffee table books. Bah...</p>