Digital Textbooks Can Cut College Costs

Each fall thousands of wide-eyed Freshmen enter the halls of their respective Universities ready to meet a new world head on. There is a giddy excitement about Orientation, getting their dorm rooms and meet their roommates. But there is one shock none of them is ever ready for–the sticker shock of their textbooks.

The average student spends over $900 each semester on textbooks. Over the course of four years that’s $7200. Throw in grad school (or a fifth year to complete their degree) and your looking at another $1800 – $7200. That’s like your student buying a brand new car and giving it away with no strings attached. Wouldn’t it be better for your kid to save at least half of that and use it to buy their own car or down payment on a house?

It’s gotten so bad that in 2009, the U.S. Congress got involved and passed the Education Opportunity Act that in part requires textbook publishers to give professors price lists and sell bundled textbooks separately. Of course, this has done nothing to bring

down textbook costs. As a matter of fact, according to a recent study from the University of Michigan, textbook prices go up almost 9% each year–faster than the cost of college tuition. But many students and schools have found a way to save some cold hard cash–digital textbooks.

More and more students are opting for digital textbooks (or ebooks) instead of expensive and back-breaking heavy print books. The upside is the digital books are 30-50% cheaper than print books. To view the books all you need is your laptop or a tablet such as the Apple iPad, Motorola Xoom, or Amazon Kindle. In a pinch you can even use an iPhone and many compatible Android phones. Can you imagine cutting your backpack weight from 45lbs down to 10lbs?

Check with your kid’s university to see if they offer their own ebooks. Some schools such as University of Dayton and Indiana University now offer digital textbook subscriptions that are negotiated through the publisher. You can even check directly with the book publisher to see if they have ebooks available on their site. The seven largest textbook publisher now have digital versions of their most popular books available for sale.

If you come up empty from the school and publisher, then it’s time to scour the web. Sites such as coursesmart.com, Amazon, and Apples iTunes all offer digital textbooks at rates that many times beat what you can get from the school. A good source for any classics you’ll need, such as Whitman’s Leaves of Grass or Cervantes’ Don Quixote, is the online book project at www.gutenberg.org. Below is an extensive list of other online resources for eBooks.

With this simple cost saving measure, your kid doesn’t have to be like the average college student that graduates with a whopping debt in excess of $24,000. But that’s a whole other conversation.

Resources for Digital Textbooks:

CourseSmart was created by textbook publishers. They have the largest catalog of digital textbooks. CourseSmart doesn’t let you purchase the books. Instead you rent the digital copy for 180 days. After that time the copy expires and will no longer open.

CengageBrain has a wide catalog of print, eBook, and audio books. They will even allow you to purchase individual chapters of books. Claims a 50% savings over print versions.

FlatworldKnowledge provides their own eReader application to read their books. If the book you need is not available, they typically show you a ETA for the book.

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