The Timely Demise of the Paper Textbook

The Timely Demise of the Paper Textbook:

"Textbook costs in schools, from Kindergarten to the University, have increased dramatically over the past two decades. Textbooks nearly tripled in price between 1986-2004 [3]. College students are forced to spend up to $1,000 a year, further adding to the burden of paying for a higher education. For school districts, the rising cost of textbooks means pushing other school funding priorities to the side, keeping outdated materials for longer, or simply doing without. For instance, even though California spends $400 million per year on textbooks, [4] 500,000 students did not have textbooks to use in class and 2 million could not take their textbook home last year [5]. In response, 34 states have introduced laws that attempt to scale back prices but only six were successful, possibly due to heavy lobbying by the industry [6]."