As college students we all experience the same hassle of buying books. We also all face the same issues when it comes to buying books: Why are they so expensive!? The materials that we purchase for our classes, and especially the textbooks, add a great number to the money we are already spending to be there. It doesn’t matter where you go to school, the same problems occur everywhere.
Not only are they expensive, but some of the books are also very thick and use a lot of paper. During the 5 years I have been in college I have also noticed a decrease in the use of textbooks. Now, I don’t know if this is true for more people, but I have noticed that professors tend to turn to outside materials more often rather than just following the textbook and its information. One reason as to why professors do this is because they believe that the textbook doesn’t necessarily cover everything they’d like to cover during class, so they turn to external sources.
With the decrease in the usage of textbooks, the amount of paper used for the printing of the textbooks, the cost of the books, and the increase of technology. Schools should consider discontinuing the use of textbooks and turning to other sources of information. Nowadays, so much can be found online, in journals or other databases that the use of textbooks may become overrated. Let’s say I am confused about a certain formula and how I can use this formula, it is more likely that I look up this information online instead of trying to find this information in the textbook since personally, I sometimes find the internet to have a better explanation than the textbook does.
Even though I am personally a big fan of having paper copies of books and articles, turning to more online sources would be cost effective and we wouldn’t have to use as many resources to print all of the books.
Photo Credit: TheAdvance-Titan
