AAP: US Student Spending on College Materials Down 23 Percent in Fall

"Charting a five-year downturn in US college students’ average spend on course materials, the Association of American Publishers reports an autumn-semester drop of 23 percent...."

And the issue of course content costs for students as an ethical dilemma was brought into focus on Wednesday (December 11) with the publication at The New York Times of Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu’s opinion piece “How Professors Help Rip Off Students.” Wu’s piece examines what he calls “the professional ethics of allowing a book to be sold at exploitative prices to young people.” ...

Asserting that instructors should at least survey “what’s out there” as an alternative to expensive traditional options, Wu lists several potential alternatives, writing, “The Rice University-based nonprofit OpenSTAX has spent years developing high-quality, peer-reviewed textbooks that are free or cheap for more than 20 of the most popular college subjects. MIT has an impressive collection of free online textbooks, and there are others. The publisher Cengage has been experimenting with a Netflix-style subscription model.” ..."