why is college so expensive?

[357]

I don't get why all college books, and high school books for that matter, aren't electronic. I mean Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440. Do you think after nearly 700 years we could move on to another form of media? Perhaps one that is free to distribute?

I'm not suggesting we do away with copyrights, just the bulk of the cost which is printing and distribution.

[Subvet642]

Originally Posted by 357

I don't get why all college books, and high school books for that matter, aren't electronic. I mean Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440. Do you think after nearly 700 years we could move on to another form of media? Perhaps one that is free to distribute?

I'm not suggesting we do away with copyrights, just the bulk of the cost which is printing and distribution.

Once the format becomes obsolete, the electricity goes out, the battery dies, you drop your reader, or whatever; then where are you? Books are already perfect the way they are, and require nothing else in order to read. All electronic media requires hardware, software and power support in order to function. A book requires only itself.

[loki]

Originally Posted by Subvet642

Once the format becomes obsolete, the electricity goes out, the battery dies, you drop your reader, or whatever; then where are you? Books are already perfect the way they are, and require nothing else in order to read. All electronic media requires hardware, software and power support in order to function. A book requires only itself.

you can misplace a book, you can get it wet, books become obsolete and are more expensive to change leading to fewer changes and they are all but unsearchable. Books are dead tech, it's time to move into another format.

[Subvet642]

Originally Posted by loki

you can misplace a book, you can get it wet, books become obsolete and are more expensive to change leading to fewer changes and they are all but unsearchable. Books are dead tech, it's time to move into another format.

You can misplace a reader, it can get wet, dropped, corrupted by a virus or destroyed by EMP. Books are indeed searchable; it's called an index. If you lose a book, it's one book; if you lose a reader, you lose all your "books". If you drop a reader, it's toast. I wonder how old the oldest surviving e-text is. The Dead Sea Scrolls are about 2000 years old. Does anybody expect any electronic text to survive that long?

[loki]

Originally Posted by Subvet642

You can misplace a reader, it can get wet, dropped, corrupted by a virus or destroyed by EMP. Books are indeed searchable; it's called an index. If you lose a book, it's one book; if you lose a reader, you lose all your "books". If you drop a reader, it's toast. I wonder how old the oldest surviving e-text is. The Dead Sea Scrolls are about 2000 years old. Does anybody expect any electronic text to survive that long?

I can count on one had the number of times I've damaged a piece of electiontics to the point they needed repaired, it's one, and the number of times I've lost one is never. I'm not going to argue this with you because there's no reason to. you like books and I prefer ereaders. not a big deal in the grand scheme of the board. have a good weekend mate.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by loki

you can misplace a book, you can get it wet, books become obsolete and are more expensive to change leading to fewer changes and they are all but unsearchable. Books are dead tech, it's time to move into another format.

Aren't all these true for electronic devices as well? Not a good counter-argument.

[sikk50]

Originally Posted by 357

I don't get why all college books, and high school books for that matter, aren't electronic. I mean Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440. Do you think after nearly 700 years we could move on to another form of media? Perhaps one that is free to distribute?

I'm not suggesting we do away with copyrights, just the bulk of the cost which is printing and distribution.

My last semester they had just started offering most books in electronic forms. I got one book like that bc it was a ton cheaper, but I discovered I prefer to have a hard copy. Highlighting and flipping pages checking you're scribbled margin notes is a lot more effective, IMHO, on a hard copy than an electronic one.

[357]

Originally Posted by Subvet642

Once the format becomes obsolete, the electricity goes out, the battery dies, you drop your reader, or whatever; then where are you? Books are already perfect the way they are, and require nothing else in order to read. All electronic media requires hardware, software and power support in order to function. A book requires only itself.

PDF format has been around for over 18 years. Yes that pales in comparison to the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that's hardly a valid comparison. Old formats can be opened in the new versions of the FREE reader application. BTW, it costs $0.000000000000000001 in electricity to create duplicates of your books in another place such as in your GMAIL inbox. Which, by the way, is on redundant disks, hosted on redundant servers, which have physical off site backup copies, possibly even on multiple CONTINENTS. I'm thinking my electronic data can survive a coffee spill better than a paperback POS. Worst case scenario, you can purchase and download a new copy 24/7. Good luck finding a bookstore with your book in stock and open at 4:00 AM on finals night.

Originally Posted by sikk50

My last semester they had just started offering most books in electronic forms. I got one book like that bc it was a ton cheaper, but I discovered I prefer to have a hard copy. Highlighting and flipping pages checking you're scribbled margin notes is a lot more effective, IMHO, on a hard copy than an electronic one.

This is a much better argument for paper books but still falls short. The fact is many people just prefer them. Fine. I have no problem with that, but don't make that the only option so you can swindle students. Offer the electronic version for 1/4 the price. Let those who want to buy the full version do so. Let the rest who want a paper copy simply print the PDF off at their own cost. Then they can highlight, scribble notes, etc, without actually modifying the original file.

I guess you can count on higher education to be 10-20 years behind in technology. We're in the midst of the information era, with streaming 1080p to handheld devices/phones, and we expect intelligent college students to pay $400 for a bound pile of paper equvalent to 3-4 MB worth of data? I get there is valuable information contained in that book, but our generation has grown up plugged into the internet. The whole concept of the internet is free or cheap information. It's a tough pill to swallow. Not to mention the situation above when a professor writes his own book, makes it mandatory, rapes you on the price, and happens to be the only professor for that course; which is in turn required for your degree. In my meager 18 months of college I experienced this twice.

[mithrilG60]

Originally Posted by 357

PDF format has been around for over 18 years. Yes that pales in comparison to the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that's hardly a valid comparison. Old formats can be opened in the new versions of the FREE reader application. BTW, it costs $0.000000000000000001 in electricity to create duplicates of your books in another place such as in your GMAIL inbox. Which, by the way, is on redundant disks, hosted on redundant servers, which have physical off site backup copies, possibly even on multiple CONTINENTS. I'm thinking my electronic data can survive a coffee spill better than a paperback POS. Worst case scenario, you can purchase and download a new copy 24/7. Good luck finding a bookstore with your book in stock and open at 4:00 AM on finals night.

Not to mention pure physical space. When I think of the amount, and weight, of crap I carted about in uni compared to the size of a tablet I just shake my head. Especially given that text books were in my experience typically just reference material I'd guesstimate that 90% of the text books I owned over the course of my degree never had the spine cracked because everything I needed to know for the course was in the lecture material.

Many programs in Canadian universities are now going entirely to ePub and other electronic formats. Several trades schools in my area now require the purchase of an iPad because all materials will be distributed on it and in doing so many programs have cut book costs from several hundred/thousand per year to just $50 - $100 (excluding the one time iPad cost of course).

Physical books will always have their place, however they have less and less importance in daily life. I have over 400 novels and technical reference materials on my iPad... a device that weighs just over 1 lbs and occupies less space than 1 week's worth of handwritten notes (w/o the binder to store them in). When I get around to returning to uni for a masters I can't imagine why I'd ever want to go back to lugging around big heavy textbooks?

[shark]

I still read books, and I read them by candlelight! (no, not really...)