The End of the Textbook as We Know It - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 11 views
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Here's the new plan: Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).
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Why electronic copies? Well, they're far cheaper to produce than printed texts, making a bulk purchase more feasible
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An Indiana company called Courseload hopes to make the model more widespread, by serving as a broker for colleges willing to impose the requirement on students. And it is not alone.
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In its standard model, Flat World offers free access to its textbooks while students are online. If students want to download a copy to their own computers, they must pay $24.95 for a PDF (a print edition costs about $30)