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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

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The "textbook kingdom"

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In its most recent survey of college pricing, the College Board reported that a “moderate” college budget for an in-state public university for the 2013-14 academic year averaged $22,826.

If expanded over four years, that number more than triples to $91,304.

Of course, this doesn’t take into account financial aid and scholarships, but one inconvenient but well-known truth reveals itself: college is expensive.

Adding to this expense is textbooks.

The average cost of textbooks and supplies was around $1,100 for the 2013-14 school year.

That might not seem like a lot when compared to $20,000, but in many cases, textbooks aren’t covered by financial aid.

A lot of the time, it’s not classes, professors, or syllabi that stress students out, but their books.

So when something such as open textbooks comes along, meaning free and available for all to use via the Internet, penny-pinching college kids are going to take notice.

A few universities in Indiana are beginning to adopt these newly available open textbooks, including Indiana State and Purdue, according to the Indianapolis Star.

ISU is offering a one-time $3,000 stipend to professors who convert their classes to using all free materials.

At ISU, this open-access initiative has saved an estimated $90,000 in textbook costs for more than 700 students in its first year.

Why aren’t other schools, such as IU, hopping on?

Textbooks lose their value just as quickly as a new car.

Publishing companies can and have changed a few exercises, moved chapters around and then release an edition as “new,” which usually just means forcing students to shell out a couple hundred bucks for the brand new edition every couple years.

This is unnecessary and simply a ploy for the textbook cartel to milk broke college students for every last dime they have.

So why can’t IU take a hint from these other institutions and adopt open-source policies?

Nobody needs a $300 biology textbook when you can just get the same information for free online.

However, there might be incentive to reading an old-fashioned book as opposed to a computer or e-book reader.

Some studies suggest there could be significant advantages in printed books if your goal is to remember what you read long-term.

But this can be taken with a grain of salt.

After all, research in this area is lacking, as e-books have obviously not been around as long as traditional books and we do not yet know their long-term effects.

With research in the area being less than conclusive, the benefits of online open-source textbooks (read, the fact that they are free), far outweigh the negatives that they might not be as good for retaining information long-term.

The Editorial Board calls for a battle against the textbook kingdom.

It is a common misconception that during one of the great famines of the reign of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette uttered the phrase “Let them eat cake.”

What she likely meant was, “Let them have free textbooks.”

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