Case Study: The True Cost Of Textbooks

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The True Cost of Textbooks Dear Council Woman Smith, I would first like to congratulate you on your newly elected position. I am writing you in order to discuss a problem that is well known to students, professors, and faculty of higher education: the ever-increasing costs of buying textbooks. The burden of these books often exceeds the cost of tuition at community colleges, where cost of education is often of most importance. I propose mandating that all textbooks required for instruction have an eBook or equivalent online source. This would simultaneously allow more individuals to afford higher education by decreasing the overall cost of instruction material, while decreasing the amount of raw materials used in the production of textbooks.…show more content…
In fact, over two thirds of college seniors have some loan debt upon graduating (FinAid). This is where I believe digital textbook and education content can make a huge impact. Commonly called eBooks or e-textbooks, their acceptance has only recently begun to be commonplace and are becoming increasingly popular among students, with 11% purchasing an e-textbook in the past year (Yu). Although the projected costs of e-textbooks to consumers has not been extensively studied, pilot programs at schools such as Virginia State University have partnered the school with start-up e-textbook publishers and successfully charged as low as $20 dollars for a class ebook and supplemental material…show more content…
This across-the-board rise in tuition is not the fault of local government but rather the overstrained and over-budgeted state and federal bureaucracies, and it would simply not be feasible to tackle the problem of tuition increases at the local level. We can, however, provide temporary reprieve for all affected students at Cal Poly University and Cuesta College with a local legislative mandate such as what I have suggested. While hurrying the transition to digital textbooks could be considered a 'band-aid' solution to the issue of affordable education, it is a necessary step in order to allow access to a fair and affordable education for all students. It is true that an initiative as such would not solve the root of the problem: the fact that the cost of a higher education is rising much faster than both inflation and income rates. The aim of this local initiative would simply be to allow for more cost effective options in receiving an

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