The first two weeks of college can be daunting for both the veteran fifth-year senior and the novice freshman. New classes filled with the fresh faces of fellow students and featuring a new professor with an unknown teaching style contribute to the intimidation affect, but perhaps the most disorienting and troubling aspect of preparing for a semester of college education is buying books. This dreaded - and some would say downright evil - practice of exchanging so much of your hard-earned money for a pile of paper and ink is not going unchallenged by the leadership of the state of Ohio.
Partnering with CourseSmart, a producer of electronic textbooks for six of the largest commercial U.S. publishers, the University System of Ohio plans on offering discounts on many of the textbooks actively being produced by these publishers. Though students will still be exchanging their hard-earned money for required texts (now in the form of a binary code stored on a CourseSmart server), the proposed price slashes (in the 50 percent range and beyond) will make buying books a more tolerable ordeal.
As helpful as this option will be to some students, saving them money while giving them a text easily transportable on a laptop and readily available through download, there are some notable disadvantages to the proposed plan. Rather than allowing students to keep copies of the books on their hard drive or have unlimited access to them online, CourseSmart only allows students to access the course material for a certain number of months, presumably for as long as the class lasts. While it stops students from illegally reproducing the material, this restriction will effectively rob students of the ability to review the material after the course ends. Plus, the ease of access to the material depends on how high-tech a campus is (how much connectivity it enjoys with a wireless network and how many computers it sports).
Many students might find computer screens uncomfortable as a medium for the text. Staring at a book for hours on end is quite a different thing from fixing one's eyes on a glowing, radiation-producing computer screen.
Convenience and cost-effectiveness might not be the biggest thing at stake here, though. The ability to stop more deforestation caused by textbook production will serve as an important part of a strategy to combat global warming. Considering that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest jumped 69 percent since last year (according to a report by the Associated Press), even though most of the destruction is being done to make room for ranchers and soy bean fields, the implementation of this option for students can only help the situation.
Despite its shortcomings, this plan is still a good, environmentally friendly and cost-effective one. As one option among many for textbook cost reduction and academic innovation, it will certainly do its share.
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