Textbooks and Publishing
[caption id=”attachment_6573" align=”alignnone” width=”665"]
The changing world of textbooks.[/caption]
As many people know all too well, college can be very expensive. Especially in a country like the United States where overall student debt has doubled in the last eight years. One of the many expenses university students face when heading back to campus is textbooks. The average student spends about twelve hundred dollars annually on textbooks and other required supplies. Over the past thirty years, the cost in textbooks has risen eight hundred percent, and in the last decade alone, there has been a steady rise in printed textbooks of about six percent each year. This rate is three times higher than the inflation rate which makes textbooks one of the fastest-growing consumer expenses in the country. Sixty-five percent of students have admitted to not purchasing a required textbook for a course due to cost despite nearly all of them expressing concern that it would hurt their academic success. Nearly half of all students say that textbook costs impact which classes as well as the number of classes they take in any given semester. There is hope for students struggling with the cost of textbooks, and that hope can be found online. The Internet facilitates the rental and purchase of textbooks, allowing people to get their books for a discount off the publisher price. The demand for digital books has been a new phenomenon sparked by the wide-scale usage of the Internet. It has also opened the doors for newer alternative publishers to provide low cost alternatives of the same subject matter as textbooks produced by major companies. The Internet has also made Open Educational Resources far more readily available. These resources provide textbooks, lesson plans, tests, and even full courses for free and are funded by the government as well as foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Like many other industries, the world of textbooks is growing and changing in new ways thanks to the Internet, and publishers are going to have to find a way to remain competitive.
sources
