Gateway Pundit goes into the business of how college professors pilfer money out of their students......
Byron York recently wrote a piece for the Washington Examiner that explained why the DOJ was attacking the idea of Kindle readers and e-books for college textbooks and preventing colleges and universities from offering them to students.York reports that the DOJ ridiculously made the claim that electronic book readers like Amazon’s Kindle violated the “civil rights” of the blind and so, e-books violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because of this the DOJ insisted that several pilot programs in colleges and universities across the country be discontinued until e-books can be “accessible” to blind people.
Now, according to the National Federation of the Blind, there are somewhere around 100,000 blind school aged children our of about 1.3 million total blind Americans. Only a portion of those will go on to college, of course. NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) estimates that there will be close to three million students attending college. So, we are holding back the advancement of millions for the comfort several thousand? Does that even make sense? Can’t blind students have other arrangements made for them, arrangements that won’t retard the progress of millions of sighted students?
In any case, that is what the Justice Department is claiming. The Kindle version of textbooks is a violation of the rights of blind people. One wonders how a regular printed textbook is any less a violation, but that is another question.
But let me suggest another reason why Obama’s administration may have jumped so quickly to quash the movement of textbooks moving from the old paper and binding style to the e-book editions.
One of the things they don't mention in the piece is the number of professors who "contribute" to the text you're buying. I've always suspected that their contribution to the process is to force you to buy the book for their brother in arms with a nice little kickback. It's a win situation for everyone.........except the student.
In addition, don't you love the 24th edition of that psychology book that has about four pages different from the original edition?
Read the whole thing......
1 comment:
This is what scares me about college, through which I have to put a son and daughter. The funding is tight and the student market is shrinking (due to the smaller youth generations). Let's face it. The future is going to be tough for the college business. So what will a liberal "business" do to solve it's financial problems? Like newspapers and the post office, it probably will:
Raise prices,
Cut service levels,
Ask for a government bailout,
Point to customer ignorance and,
(drum roll please) blame Bush.
Can't wait to see the tuition prices increase 20% every year for the next 5 years.
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