Free textbooks for everyone?

Miscellaneous discussions. Things that don't have anything to do with Western, Leatherneck Athletics, college sports in general, etc.
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sealhall74
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Joined: Fri Apr 18, 2014 1:18 pm
Location: Wherever, Windblows

Here is my suggestion for setting WIU apart from the rest of the higher education world: WIU becomes the first and only public university to provide free e-textbooks to all students. I spent a few hours this past weekend going through my book collection. Needless to say, I had many out-of-date job and career-related computer books. Call me a bit of a hoarder for this, but I also had nearly every college textbook still in my possession. I turned the Big Six Oh over the weekend and felt it was now time to shed the worry of someone having to deal with all of these books when I die, so my book collection is now about 20% of what it was before thanks to the trash service and the recycling dropoff location.

Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois gave it a shot (his idea is not free but more affordable) last year but that bill is going to die a slow death (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s2176). Why wait for government to make it happen? We should take the initiative. I know the WIU bookstore might take a big hit by doing something like this. On the other hand, this action just might attract several hundred students who would rather save the approximate $1200 that are typically spent each and every year on books. We are looking for some kind of niche, right? This would be a damn good first start. The additional students just might drop in to the Bookstore to purchase a sweatshirt or two along with some Ts. We should probably put a new label on that space in the Union and call it "Rocky's Fashion Shop".

So where do you get free digital/electronic books these days? There are several sites out there. I spent a few minutes browsing one and from what I could tell, their collection was plenty good enough to get a kid through at least three years of college math classes. If you have some free time, take a look and see how your majors or subjects of interest fare.

http://bookboon.com/
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