College Textbooks May Become Free at the University of Maryland

by Andy Diaz, Guardian LV

A successful student campaign in the University of Maryland served as a catalyst for changing the way college textbooks are sold on campus by making them free. Students wrote on a whiteboard explaining the costs of their textbooks some claiming they paid over one hundred dollars for one book while another student paid near a thousand dollars for a semester of books. Stories like this are common across the country where college prices are rising exponentially. The University of Maryland has taken the student’s complaints into consideration and have begun a pilot program to transition all needed course material to an open source electronic textbooks. Open source textbooks are not protected by copyright and therefore available to all who have an internet connection. A similar program has been done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California State University, and the Washington State College, but went beyond just textbooks and created the “open courseware” program to allow anyone who wants to get an education in a variety of topics.

http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/college-textbooks-may-become-free-at-the-university-of-maryland/

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