As Carleton students, chances are you’ve felt the pain of parting with hundreds of dollars in exchange for heavy textbooks that are only useful for a few months.
In first year, you spend it without a second thought, thinking it’s the only way. But by second year, most students have begun to find other options.
Some order books online, some rent brand-new ones, some turn to second-hand stores, some use e-book versions, and some obtain their required course materials illegally by downloading them.
Students shouldn’t need to spend this much time trying to find an affordable way to learn. With the internet and media, it should be easy for professors to find suitable learning materials—it doesn’t matter what book you read it in, Shakespeare still wrote Macbeth.
Yet prices haven’t dropped to match sales. An Ottawa Citizen article from 2008 said students spent up to $1,000 per semester on books.
Some professors are taking matters into their own hands. For example, some Carleton professors teach their courses using only material from the Internet.
Both professors and publishers of Canadian textbooks need to follow this accommodating way of thinking and try to step into the shoes of today’s students. We can’t afford to spend the thousands of dollars textbooks cost us.
