It seems to me that every generation of college going adults spends the majority of their time complaining about the cost of attendance and the price of textbooks. Yet, no matter how many years go by with rising textbook prices, no one does anything about it. What ever happened to the days of school owned textbooks that students took out for the year (on loan) and then returned to the school for no cost (or possibly a small fee included in tuition). Remember those days? Probably not. After all, you weren't paying for that. Your parents were.
But then, after graduation, we enter a world where everything costs money. Everyone wants their dollar. And college students seem to be the most victimized of them all. Credit card companies come after us the second we set foot outside our parents' homes and demand that we apply for their credit card, run it up, and then default on the line of credit that they so cleverly knew we wouldn't be able to afford in the beginning.
But I digress...
With the internet the way it is now, I propose a new solution to the textbook problem. Let's sell online versions of textbooks to colleges. Colleges can then charge a small fee (much smaller than the cost of purchasing textbooks) for the use of their online textbooks. We're all attached to our laptops, cell phones, and tablets anyway. Why not get electronic versions of our textbooks and read them on said gadgets?
I know there is a sort of version of this, in that you can purchase electronic books from your local college bookstore. But who says those books have to be hundreds of dollars? If the college pays up front and then charges students accordingly, I'm sure it would lower costs for all of us.
Why do I have to come up with these ideas? If Columbia is such an innovative school, why aren't they doing this yet?
Lauren
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