DegreeGo Blog

Heated debates are rampant across the Internet for trying to get a Kindle into the hands of every student–or some other e-book alternative. The discussion about e-books being offered at the college level has also come up. Whether it is at the K-12 public school level, at primary education private schools, or at the higher education level, e-books are taking the educational system by storm and slowly evolving into the new “must have” for the students of this generation.

This isn’t new. Digital books have been taking over the publishing industry for quite some time, causing debates whether books should be published immediately in e-book format on hardback release date or not (which can lead to a probable decline in hardcover sales for the book stores.) E-books are simply education getting on the electronic book bandwagon.

Some schools, like American Sentinel University, were offering free Kindles to students that enrolled before the end of last August. Not surprising, considering the same colleges are going through an e-book reform so that they may offer course material to their students without the back-breaking weight on their shoulders or the extraneous costs of printed reading.

College costs extend far beyond tuition- with housing, commuting, and living expenses all contributing to a pricey proposition, and a potentially very expensive degree. College graduates continue to rack up debt at an alarming rate, with 60% of new graduates carrying quite a financial burden, including graduates of the class of 2007 who owe an average of $22,700 each, as reported by the College Board. Textbook costs add significantly to the financial grief, and they’ve been a cause for complaint from college students of multiple generations. In fact, textbook prices are such a contentious issue that even Barack Obama entered the debate during a speech from his presidential campaign run, loudly proclaiming that “Books are a big scam.” He went on to explain that “law professors [who] write their own text books and then assign it to their students… make a mint. It’s a huge racket.”