Is the average cost of a textbook $100? – openoregon.org

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-02-19

Summary:

"When Open Oregon Educational Resources calculates savings, the dollar amount does not account for textbook buybacks, sharing a book, pirating a book, not buying a book at all, or the other ways that students manage their limited resources outside of what’s on offer at the bookstore.

Students tend to be very concerned about book exchanges and often say that they would like more opportunities to sell their textbooks back. However, there is never a guarantee that they will be able to do so at the campus store. If a new edition is released or the instructor changes their adoption, the bookstore won’t be able to buy back the previous book. Even if there is a need to stock used copies of the book, students still need to have spent the money at the beginning of the term in order to access the course materials.

We know that students avoid purchasing textbooks that they can’t afford, and there is interesting analysis on why student expenditures are not rising along with prices. But to measure savings, the point is to record what is expected of students per the syllabus. And the bookstore is where students can spend financial aid money, veterans benefits, and so on – so it’s not useful to factor in avoidance behavior when calculating savings."

Link:

http://openoregon.org/is-the-average-cost-of-a-textbook-100/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » lterrat's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.books

Date tagged:

02/19/2017, 18:12

Date published:

02/19/2017, 13:12