College is expensive. You have to pay tuition, pay for books, room and board, the list goes on and on.
My home State of Florida is looking to alleviate some of these costs, and I could not be more on board. According to a recent article at Consumerist, State Universities in Florida are looking to offer textbooks to students for free online. While it will not make tangible textbooks obsolete (yet), it will take a large financial burden off many students who struggle every semester to make ends meet.
With music and movies becoming digital format products, I suspect that many books and other reading materials are not far off. It is nice to see colleges realize this and offer alternatives to expensive mainstays of life in college.
So, will we soon be seeing other schools following suit? Will it soon be “normal” to expect to pay little or nothing to access textbooks while we further our educations? Furthermore, are publishing companies going to slowly disappear due to the digital format? I’d like to know what you think about this, particularly the future of the manufacturing and distribution of books as a whole. So please do not hesitate to weigh in on this yourself.
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