Textbook Trade-Offs - Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed

It's well documented that textbooks aren't cheap, but for some students, affording course materials takes priority over paying for meals or flights home, or pursuing their first choice of major. A new study by Morning Consult for Cengage, an educational technology and services company, asked 1,651 current and former college students how purchasing textbooks figures into their financial picture. Forty-one percent of those students said that textbooks and other course materials had "somewhat of an impact" on their financial situation, and 46 percent said that it had "a big impact." "We truly are in an access crisis," said Richard Baraniuk, a professor at Rice University and founder of OpenStax, a nonprofit that provides access to free digital editions of textbooks. "Over the past 40 years, college textbook prices have risen about 1,000 percent, which is extraordinary." https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/07/26/students-sacrifice-meals-and-trips-home-pay-textbooks