Should college textbooks be provided by the university?
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Should college textbooks be provided by the university?
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No Way!
That would just give the college another reason to raise tuition fees.
And that is just my not-so-humble opinion.
Reading my mind Jason.
At the moment, I was purchasing my college textbooks. Check this out ladies and gentlemen.
Four textbooks, most of them new, $400. Now, I'm not complaining about that one. I have to get this new one, and I looked everywhere, and it's $140.00 new, $136.00 old. How on Earth is that book worth $140.00. Why isn't anyone doing anything about these prices?
Oh well, they are getting cheaper these days, I can read the book online for $68.00. There is nothing in the textbooks too, it's all fluff, but you have to have the textbooks these days, you just have to have it.
Buy them used (if at all). What exactly was the problem here? Tuition costs are much higher and rising much faster than textbooks.
Well, that's what happens when you go to a private institution. You knew going in, ballpark, how much your family and/or you would have to pay.
Textbooks, that can cut off about 5k of your bills. They are an outside business, not the college itself. It's a problem.
While in college in southern CA, I had to buy a particular book for a particular class – it was required – and that dang thing cost me well over a hundred bucks! Here's the deal, that book was no more than a paperback dime novel in size (for you younger folks that would be about the size and width of a standard CD case with the thickness of a heavy metal magazine). I still have it, although its contents are totally useless in today's world.
I like the idea of online textbooks. Cheaper by the dozen and you don't have to lug them from class to class!
I think they should, we pay enough money for an education (depending on your economic situation).
Yes, and you would pay a lot more if textbooks came "free".
I think public colleges should get free textbooks, not private ones.
So you'd rather state and local taxpayers pay for your books and that private college attendees will ultimately pay more than they already do to make up for the subsidized profit losses of textbook publishers?
Yepp.
Just making sure you understood what you were asking for. I think that's totally inefficient and useless economically speaking, but then that's true of much of college education prices.
I presume you're also aware that public tuition costs would then go up anyway.
Yes, but then we will just get more taxpayer money.
Exactly. That's already how that works.
Why not split the middle gentlemen, text books are not free, but there is no reason for them to be sold at so high a cost. I understand publishers are trying to recuperate printing losses because these books are sold in only a niche markt (who's going to borders to buy "economics and the world market 5th edition by barton lathi" for light reading?). But honestly, the book is not worth $140 dollars… I was an engineering student in college…. now those books could bankrupt you, I spent $1000, thats right a thousand dollars a semester on books… That just sucks… Lower the price, keep the bill on the students, don't pass that buck onto the tution or the tax payers also.