Nostalgia aside, it may come as a relief to many, then, that textbooks are becoming anachronistic. Digital in-class learning materials, like software that adapts to the ways in which individual students acquire information, and other forms of virtual education content are becoming more effective and intelligent. College-affordability advocates and others hope this growth could result in the normalization of less costly or even free materials down the road.

But as the executives failed to acknowledge in that meeting, the shortcomings of this trend—and its prospective impact on how humans learn—are worth keeping in mind. Many digital learning materials completely overhaul how classes, from pre-k to grad school, are conducted; how students are tested on knowledge; and how teachers fit into the picture.

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While the rising cost of college has gotten a lot of attention in the media, much of that coverage neglects to detail just how much textbook prices have skyrocketed: 82 percent in the last decade, according to a 2013 study by the Government Accountability Office.

Increases in New College Textbook Prices by Percentage, 2002-2012

Government Accountability Office

Many critics blame this trend on what they describe as a rigged textbook economy that only profits the publishing industry. Which in many ways makes sense: The textbook world operates differently from most consumer markets because the consumers—the students and teachers—rarely get to choose what they’re buying. They typically just receive a syllabus and purchase as told. As a result, the price point is largely exempt from popular demand, giving publishers supreme control.



One of the college textbook industry’s most egregious practices, it seems, is that it constantly republishes new editions, rendering even last season’s versions outdated. One professor told me this tendency is necessary because of perennial advances in the given field. However, although that may be true on occasion, even people who were formally employed in the industry have admitted that these "new" editions typically include little more than glorified cosmetic updates—a new picture, for example, or a heading adjustment.

Advocates have called for more open-source textbooks as alternative—resources available online at little to no cost. Ethan Senack, who advocates on federal higher-education issues for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, is particularly vocal in his support for this alternative, recently authoring a report, "Open Textbooks: The Billion Dollar Solution," that details how much money students can save using open-source materials. "We see price tags as high as $280 to $300 [each], and it’s just too much," he told me. "We have the technology now where we can deliver learning materials in an affordable way."

Senack is, of course, right to say that technology has changed how the textbook market operates. But that evolution, at least initially, hasn’t happened in the way cash-strapped students may have hoped. Many college courses still use physical textbooks and mandate digital content as an add-on—complete with end-of-semester expiration dates, which undermine resale value, for example. These new strategies are exactly what irk Senack: "They [the publishers] have continued the same practices they’ve used to limit the spread of knowledge … It’s just a continuation of the bad practices."