College stores know all too well that students complain
about the prices of textbooks. They’ve been doing it for years, but the noise
has gotten much louder over the last decade—so loud that state and national
legislators keep churning out laws and regulations in an effort to provide solutions.
Advances in technology have only increased the amount
of criticism because most assumed that digital would automatically reduce
costs. It hasn’t turned out that way because those assumptions never considered
the price of content, according to Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of SharedBook Inc.,
in this Inside Higher Education essay. The prices have students staying away from digital format, when
the cost is nearly the same as the printed version and rental is available as
an option.
Some see potential in open educational resources to
lower costs, but there’s work to be done in developing a system that delivers
both the “free and open” OER content and commercially produced materials to
students.
Vanderlip says merging traditional and free content has the
best chance to make a quick impact on textbook pricing. Such merging would
allow students to purchase only the material an instructor deems necessary, which
would lower costs regardless of the format.
