By: John Dow
Submitted: 2009-09-12 22:14:18 | Word Count: 581
College books aren’t only expensive; they’re obsolete in 2 3 years at best. Since it’s doubtful there will ever be a commercial market for college books, why do they still print them? To print a limited amount of a single book is expensive, then add on the distributor and bookstore markup and it gets worse.
The average cost for a year of books can hit $2000 at many colleges. That’s just another example of why a college education is increasing in cost every year. It doesn’t matter who’s paying, costs are approaching a level that no one will be able to afford a college education.
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Students who have to pay their own way and have to borrow money to do so come out with a piece of paper and a bill for upwards of $100,000. That’s a heck of a debt to carry just out of college. Most student loans are amortized over 10 years so that puts the monthly burden at over $800 without interest.
And if the figure of a couple of grand a year for books is accurate, about 10 of that debt can be college books that they use for about 3 months. Think about that for a minute, that’s a pretty stiff price to pay for something that has such a short life span.
If they made the books into electronic form, they could charge a third of that and still make more money for the author. Distribution costs would be nil, books could be updated for little or nothing, and information could be absolutely current. Is no one paying attention?
So what’s the downside? Book publishers would scream but welcome to the new world. There’s no stopping progress; ask the newspapers and magazine publishers. I’m sure there would be security issues but most popular books are now published in Kindle format so they have must have some kind of solution available.
And for those that want a hard copy, let them print it out (and the publishers could charge for that ability). It would appear this would be good for all concerned. Commercial booksellers are managing to make money using the system, why can’t college text book publishers?
On campus colleges need to start doing everything they can to bring the cost of a college education down to a reasonable cost. If they don’t, the online colleges are going to start stealing their students. Online colleges are growing in leaps and bounds. And it’s not just the convenience factor; it’s the huge savings in cost too.
Average cost per year for a 4 year on Campus College is about $26,000 (up 6 from last year alone). Average costs for online colleges per year run just under $15,000. That’s a savings of about 40 over the four years of college. That’s a serious amount of money.
I would think that the traditional colleges would be working hard to reduce costs to better compete. But colleges don’t have to make a profit; maybe that’s another issue. Anyway you slice it, any cost savings for students would benefit everyone concerned.
Going to electronic textbooks could be a good start. And it’s an easy target since the technology is here and now. And this doesn’t have to happen over night; it could easily be phased in over time. Let the current printed textbooks serve their time and introduce the new electronic versions on the next update or change in individual textbooks.
