Wouldn't it be nice to spend your money on something other then college textbooks. When you think about it, the cost of a semester's worth of books can range from $100 (if you're lucky) all the way to $500 (if you decide to buy new). The costs are ridiculous. It can be stressful for some students to find a source of money to purchase all the required books.
Well, a company called Flat World Knowledge is now offering college textbooks online for free. Over the summer, Flat World Knowledge converted over 400 colleges from the traditional form of textbooks to the new digital, DRM-free textbooks. The price is free for online browser and $20 for a PDF. Which when you think about the cost, the digital form is a lot cheaper than the average textbook.
An advantage is that the whole college does not have to participate in the change from print to digital, only a professor has to make a change. Just think, if a handful of professors here at Belmont University made the change, the overall cost of education would be hundreds less.
Do you think it would be an advantage for Belmont to make the switch? Would the students actually want the change?
You can access the full article here:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/21/free.college.textbooks/index.html?iref=newssearch
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11 comments:
I really hated spending so much on textbooks this semester. This would make a big difference in costs and could help out students everywhere. I just wonder if having to have computer and internet access to do your homework or bring to class would too be inconvenient?
I think it would be great if Belmont made the switch to digital textbooks. Even though you would need Internet access to get to your materials, I think that would be better than paying several hundred dollars for a textbook you're probably going to end up selling back to the bookstore (assuming that the WiFi bubble stays reliable). The only thing would be that the bookstore would be out of a lot of business, but I'm sure they could adapt by selling more of other things.
yes please! that would be fantastic, and it would play into our whole going green effort. Which in my opinion we're approaching the wrong way, however, that's a whole different issue.
I would LOVE this change! It is rediculas how much we have to spend on books. I think a change like this is on the horizon unfortunately by the time it's the norm I will be out of college.
Everyone would agree that saving money is desirable. I know that the cost of my textbooks for just this semester were extremely high, and I think that the prices are ridiculous considering I only use some of the books a couple times in certain classes. The pros of digital textbooks are that they are environmentally friendly and don't differ in quality from material text books. If anything the quality is better because you don't have to deal with water marks, torn pages, and writing found in many used textbooks. More bang for your buck- and we are saving paper- sounds like a good deal to me.
I think it would definitaly be worth it. I bought as many used books as i could from the bookstore and still spent almost 600 dollars, which to me is outrageous. Its a good idea to go green and save some green.
I would love this considering I had to spend my own freaking money on textbooks!!! I was so mad when I heard the final price because all that money is precious to me. I don't have a ton of money to my name and I don't spend it a lot because I like to save so the textbook thing put me through the roof. AND my parents already have to pay full tuition so it adds up. I think it is bullcrap and this system is way better
Of course students would love the change! Think about all of the extra money we could have for other, sometimes more important, things. Some of my textbooks I've barely touched. I think that if the textbooks were offered online for free, we could be more efficient with our money. Students can only look up the pages that they need for class. Even the PDF files are significantly cheaper than the books.
Textbooks really are too expensive. Between the cost of tuition, room and board, and other miscellaneous needs, the amount of a college education is ridiculous. Not to mention that its even more for students like us attending a private institution. I think Flat World Knowledge is heading in the right direction, although I would prefer my books in print, so as to be able to annotate if needed. College education as a whole needs to be altered so that receiving an education isn't so expensive.
This would be really awesome. But reading off the the computer screen would kill my eyes, and printing off all the pages that would use a lot of ink. So would it be worth it? I'm not sure. As long as it all comes out to a savings, I'm totally down with this.
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