A New York Times article Putting a Dent in College Costs With Open-Source Textbooks mentions University of Minnesota’s Open Textbook Library and OpenStax College.

Thanks for sharing this article.
The "free or low-cost" factor seems to be a pretty big "if", as corporate profits may be realized in the near term from cost savings on printing/binding, and in the long term by charging increasing access fees.

One cost-saving solution for college students which was not mentioned in the article is purchasing USED textbooks. Textbook rentals are another possible solution. Books can also be shared. Books can be kept for hundreds of years, as they are not technology dependent.

As mentioned on a recent thread, a textbook version may be less portable, yet books offer advantages such as stability of content, publication history (version, copyright date, ISBN), ability to thumb through, and no data tracking of readers.

Unfortunately, comparing different editions of books over time shows that some textbooks appear to be "dumbing down". Some may say that if books become obsolete and replaced with online content, there may be total filtering/censorship of information and an unaware citizenry.

Thinking long-term, offering published, printed, bound books and also online access to identical editions may present the best of both worlds.

Unfortunately, the textbook companies have circumvented this by cranking out new editions, (cosmetically changed but incompatible), every couple of years.

The used textbook market has also been more or less ruined by the invention of textbook buyback. Bookstores and buyback companies offer students an easy way to get back a portion of what they paid, so students jump at the offer. The seller then gets to mark it up substantially for the next student. It used to be that you could score used textbooks directly from the previous student for a very modest price, but no more.

To add to what has been offered, print textbooks at least can be "ported" in a resale market. Not so much with e-texts (which publishers, quite naturally, just love-- wonder why that is? ).

I'll also say that the headline up there about college costs made me guffaw. Out loud.

The reason?

Well, because my DD's textbook costs are about the same as they'd be anywhere, and given her double (triple??) major, we're also accustomed to some STEM major courses having pretty extreme textbook expenses associated.

Still.

Tuition annually runs 15K plus, even at modestly priced state public colleges these days.

Her textbook costs for the year are-- even in light of the factors mentioned previously, such as needing STEM texts and reference texts for several majors-- a mere 1500 or so.

That cost would not be significantly different at an institution where tuition topped 50K annually.

This also ignores the fact-- mentioned recently by Val and myself-- that faculty are now enamored of "pay-to-play" methods of submitting work for college courses, as well-- so THAT isn't going to go away any time soon, and there really aren't free versions of Pearson's massive industry (MyMathLab comes to mind here) there. That alone is several hundred dollars of costs annually.

So sure.

Save $1000. Off of annual costs of $65,000.

This is not the way to "fix" spiraling college expenses. This is a bit like complaining about an annoying gnat whilst riding on the hind end of a charging rhino, to be frank.



My recommendation? Use ISBN numbers, and use Abe, Amazon, and the like to score a copy that meets your price point. Shop EARLY.

It can still be done-- we've done price shopping for many years since DD's online school frequently failed to provide anything but clunky e-texts, and she (and we) feel rather strongly that in most instances, the print edition offers advantages.