Quote:
Originally Posted by atisketatasket
When tuition is thousands of dollars a semester minimum and into the tens of thousands per year, hundreds of dollars a semester on textbooks isn’t the problem sparking the rising cost of higher education. Textbooks are just the most immediate out of pocket observable cost for most students.
It’s salaries, administrative and faculty, because you have a highly educated workforce and highly educated workforces cost more, and it’s changing standards of “educational care,” sometimes mandated by law, sometimes by trying to stay competitive with one’s peer colleges. Public funding of higher education is declining, too.
That said, I am all for free textbooks or at least letting students use older cheaper editions.
|
I never said textbooks were the problem, I said minimizing textbook expenses is probably one of the easiest ways to reduce expenses. I don't see anyone volunteering to take a pay cut to lower educational expenses, nor should they. Yes, textbooks are the most immediately observable out of pocket cost for most students, which is exactly my point - and there doesn't need to be some huge bureaucratic process to affect costs.
Sure, making a little change doesn't solve the big problem, but it makes a difference for me and for other students and is worth doing.