At a listening session yesterday at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, political-science sophomore Nate Krautz asked Sen. Terri Bonoff what legislators have done to curb the escalating cost of textbooks. The Minnetonka DFLer who chairs the Higher Education Committee replied that lawmakers did address the problem last session — and wanted to address it even Read more →
Glitches in Inver Hills Community College‘s move to online-only textbook sales left many students without books for the first two weeks of the semester, faculty and students say — and some students still don’t have all their materials. Faculty have had to push back assignments and scale back on lab activities because students haven’t had Read more →
I thought I’d post this as a follow-up to my previous story on open textbooks. It highlights some of the options that student leaders at MnSCU’s universities would like to explore. I find the last two ideas — loosening financial aid and tuition-payment restrictions to account for textbooks — interesting. I’m hoping to follow up Read more →
Student representatives for the state’s colleges and universities have been pushing for cheaper alternatives to textbooks, and they’re hoping they’ll gain some ground now that they have backing from the state Legislature. The recently passed higher education bill orders the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system to find a way to use free and Read more →
You may remember my piece in which student leaders said this task force might might be proposed. Here’s one bill. Another follows. The author of this bill is state Rep. Terry Morrow (DFL-St. Peter): H.F. No. 2660, as introduced – 87th Legislative Session (2011-2012) Posted on Mar 05, 2012 1.1A bill for an act 1.2relating Read more →
UW-Madison spokesman Brian Rust tells the Wisconsin State Journal why Madison and five other universities — including the University of Minnesota — are buying electronic textbooks in bulk to lower prices in a pilot project starting this semester: “We’re hoping it will not only make texts more accessible in terms of being on a number Read more →
The Minnesota State College Student Association (MSCSA) is working on a survey to see how well federal and state disclosure laws on textbook pricing are being carried out on two-year campuses. You may remember that in January I I wrote about the results of another survey by the association and the state Office of Higher Read more →
… Students also share their textbooks because they are so incredibly expensive. And as the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on e-books makes lending someone your copy difficult if not impossible, students are likely steering away from e-books because they simply don’t work for them — practically or economically. After all, there is little savings Read more →
I posted just yesterday about students’ preference for printed textbooks over digital ones, and now University of St. Thomas circulation desk worker Nathan Wunrow tells TommieMedia that its collection of Kindle readers is “rarely” checked out: “It has its highs and lows maybe in the summer and J-term it’s better, but right now I don’t know Read more →
This graphic still intrigues me. Despite all the talk and all the articles and blog posts about e-Books, Kindle and all the digital breakthroughs, three in four students still seem to love the old paper texts. And despite the accessibility of information on the Web, two out of three students feel the way I did Read more →
Alex Friedrich