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Why Textbooks Should Be Free
All institutions whether attending a university, community, or even a technical college, requires the student to purchase a textbook in order to be successful in the class. Some textbooks aren’t even open all semester and the information and statistics can be out of date and can greatly affect your overall knowledge on certain topics. In addition, cost free text books can enhance the quality of education by the teachers and serve more accessibility to working students. Although councils and administrations can’t approve cost free text books, policies such as, Open Textbook, bookstore rentals, and affordable textbook act should be offered nationwide. As an experienced freshmen surviving the first year of college, textbooks should be purchased free of cost provided by institutions throughout the country.
College is a time where individuals will experience a small glimpse of the profession they want to pursue in. Whether you’re majoring in engineering or receiving a certificate, the classes to complete the course are required to have a textbook. At the rate of advanced technology, textbooks can be easily accessible via internet without having to haul a book when choosing the “perfect time to study.” With this luxury, students can do homework at any time of the day without the physical materials needed besides a phone or laptop. In conclusion, providing free textbooks can financially help students who would also have to pay for everyday living expenses.
If colleges are going provide education at a hefty price, the quality of teaching shouldn’t be based upon a book rather their own teaching methods. Allie Bidwell, staff writer of usnews.com states, “in a survey of more than 2,000 college students in 33 s...
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...g a book for the course. As a result, publishers continues to dominate the market by making their product the only product in order to become successful in class.
In conclusion, America provides many ways to help reduce the cost of college textbooks but society is still not satisfied with the outcome. The Open Textbook, Affordable Textbook Act, and book store rentals are wonderful programs, but has its disadvantages that hopefully would be resolved in the 2016 presidential elections. The statistics show that many students across the nation benefit from learning with quality of teaching, the amount of accessibility it provides without having to worry about paying off student loans. School administrations should consider about transferring to an act that would benefit both the school and the students, but also provide more equality to the publishers and students.
In a recent study that was conducted the rate of individuals attending college has increased. This increase in students comes at a time when the country has been described as being in a recession. With job losses, companies closing and lack of job availability many people are returning to school. This return to the classroom comes at a cost. The rate of college tuition has risen in the last few years. In my home state of Kentucky, it appears both of the major Universities have asked to raise tuition every other year. When college cost rise so does the tools needed to attend college. One of the most expensive tools is books. Last year I enrolled my son in college when calculating the books for his classes, we soon learned that the cost of his books and the cost of my books were almost on month’s salary. My family soon learned if we were going to be able to not only attend college but have the necessary tools needed, we would have to consider alternatives to buying books. I did some research and soon discovered that technology had again come to the rescue. I found a company called Chegg that is an online book rental company. This company provides students with an alternative to buying books by renting them for a portion of the price. According to their article in CrunchBase named “Chegg edit” the company began at Iowa University in 2005 as a “hyper-local” classified directory. It was not until 2007 that the company introduced their textbook rental service. When looking at the company from an Information Systems standpoint I would say it ranks up there with the creative ideas of the century. You go online type in your order and it is processed within a matter of days. During the next portion of this paper we will loo...
This article, “Why Are Textbooks So Expensive?” by Henry Roediger reveals the truth of why textbooks are so pricey. He shows how textbooks prices are costly not because of inflation, corporate textbook companies, and frequent revisions, but because of the sale of used textbooks. The article is elaborating on why used textbooks are the real culprit as well. One main point that is highlighted is that used textbooks are resold for many years. The initial selling of the textbook is the only time the author will make a profit, but the bookstore will make a profit every time they resell a used book. It is essential for the author to raise the price to compensate for the loss of money when dealing with used textbooks.
In his essay “Colleges Should Mandate That All Textbooks Be Digitized,” Mark Pensky, software designer and author of Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom, takes the position that colleges should ban non-electronic books to improve teaching and learning. Some of the issues he speaks to are; what a bookless college would look like, moving education into the 21st century, addressing pushback of the social and cultural norms, creating enhancements to the educational system, the advantages of having an all digital campus, and the roles of teachers and college surrounding this subject of banning non-digital textbooks.
...university needs to stop requiring packaged materials and should move away from textbooks that require one-time access codes. Also, they can reuse textbooks for several semesters because the core information remains the same from edition to edition, eliminating the need to constantly replace the stock with every new edition. Students would be held responsible for the condition of their assigned book, and will also be given the option of keeping it at the end of the semester. In either case, the school has options in place to recover the cost of the textbook should a student destroy or decide to keep a specific book. By implementing such a program, students at the University of Delaware will be less inclined to resort to illegal measures to save money, and they will certainly be less likely to incur even more debt as the cost of college tuition continues to rise.
There is no escaping the fact that the cost of college tuition continues to rise in the United States each year. To make it worse, having a college degree is no longer an option, but a requirement in today’s society. According to data gathered by the College Board, total costs at public four-year institutions rose more rapidly between 2003-04 and 2013-14 than they did during either of the two preceding decades (Collegeboard.com). Students are pressured to continue into higher education, but yet, the increasing costs of books and tuition make us think twice. Sometimes, some of these students have to leave with their education partially finished, leaving them with crushing debts.
One gargantuan textbook for each class so that a teacher can not only eat potato chips, but also watch netflix at the same exact time! Woo-hoo! It’s a win-win for both sides; schools save money; easy cha-ching put in the bank; students get an outstanding education; students earn the meaningful “A” that clearly demonstrates their intelligence. Everyone’s
The next point that Parsons makes is that because of the budget cuts there is a shortage of paper on campus. Students are to download syllabus and absorb the cost of printing themselves. Therefore, raising the cost of being a student. I can’t say that I completely agree with this point. In the couple of years that I have been in college I have never had to print syllabuses off of the Internet. I was always given a copy from my instructor.
Many students are attracted to the sound of a free college education; even political candidates have started using the promise of free college to win votes for their campaign. The idea does sound good to present college students or future college students, free college for whoever wants it. Such action would allow many students to attend college that previously couldn’t. Many people hit the roadblock of, “How do I pay for a higher education?” This is due to the fact that the average cost for a bachelor’s degree in the United States for in-state tuition is around $18,000 a year (NCES).
Through connection and communication, work ethic has improved in schools especially when a student’s score means a lot to school funding. The old ways of using textbooks can cause back pain when carrying it around everywhere and kill trees when making them. With new editions of a textbook being published it creates more worry for schools since it can cost a fortune to buy each book for classrooms to stay updated to the newest information.
“American schools are literally falling apart” as a result of Nixon’s “block grants” and Bush’s budget cuts during their respective presidencies (pg. 161-2). Libraries have closed, or decreased their hours of operation. Decades old textbooks continue to be used, with few sources of current information present for the students because their libraries cannot afford to remain open. Schools are so overcrowded they hold class anywhere, from additional buildings to the
In Austin, Texas, every decade fifteen people influence what is taught to the next generation of American children. The highly politicized Texas Board of Education gets to rewrite the teaching standards and textbook standards for its approximate 5 million schoolchildren. However, any changes made in Texas, trickle down into the rest of the nation. Texas is home to one of the nation's largest textbook markets (the other being the state of California), because as a state, it decides what textbooks schools can buy, rather than leaving it up to local districts (“The Revolutionaries”). Hence, publishers face the economic conundrum of whether they curtail the intellect...
Textbooks are reliable, they can be used by anyone, and there are enough textbooks for each student to have their own, and be able to take them home. Also, technology is impacting the way the brain receives information. Reading digital print isn't as productive for readers as printed text, and there is limited access to resources needed for tablets to be effective when used by students. While this is true there are benefits to using tablets and other forms of technology in the classroom. It is easier for teachers to have assignments emailed directly to them, or post assignments on the internet, the use of technology is required in many core classes, and textbooks are easily worn, and expensive.
Advances in technology have drowned the human race. Even though these advances have their countless benefits, they also have their downsides. Along the same lines, replacing high school textbooks with laptop computers does have some advantages, but also has many disadvantages. Laptops in high schools are a huge distraction for students, they are very expensive to initially buy and maintain, and they can cause many health problems. Replacing textbooks with laptops in high schools ignores the negative effects on students, leading one to conclude that it is a terrible idea.
As more people began to access the Internet through smart phones and tablets rather than laptops and computers, it is not a surprise that they would also want to transform the American education system by bringing tablets into classrooms. In fact, a few schools around the country have already replaced textbooks with tablets and have seen improvements in students’ standardized test scores. Using tablets instead of textbooks is not only convenient and helpful, but it can also reduce the amount of paper wastes in school. However, it is not a good idea to completely transform textbooks with tablets with the current technology, for it can not only be damaging to the environment and costly to set up, but also might not be effective in improving K-12 education in the long run.
Similar to any type of argument, there will always be advantages and disadvantages for each of paper book and e-book. Therefore prior to outlining the advantages of ebook, and discussing how those advantages outweigh its disadvantages for the purpose of objectivity this essay will first describe the advantages of the traditional hardcopy books, which had formed some of the counterarguments, and subsequently address these issues one by one and comparatively highlight the advantages of ebooks .