[nickfrostatx]

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I'm not sure about shifting the cost of textbooks to the school and charging for it through tuition. In my three years of school so far, I haven't bought a single textbook, and I've only had to pirate two. And I only pirated those two to have the questions for mandatory homework problems, didn't really use the material.

I think that if a student can find better alternatives to their assigned textbook, making the school buy it anyway and charge it through tuition just seems wasteful.

[diamondlovesyou]

In my case, at the University of Kansas, a lot of the time assignments will come from the required textbook (when not taken from some online system), so still kinda required. Homework is a teacher aid anyway (in a sense, though I do realize for many it is also a study aid), so why am I forced to pay outside of tuition? I don't pay for tests outside of tuition.

Either way, the intention is to make the person (ie the dept chair/professor) who selects the textbook/online homework/etc be the one to pay for it; otherwise there's no is pressure to use cheaper books (or rather the books with the best value/cost ratio).

Also, I presume that the universities would be able to bargain down to a lower price, due to gains had in mass production (as an analogy) or your usual volume ordering discounts reminiscent of Monoprice. This is especially true if the university buys access to N pdf every semester, which offer practically free distribution costs vs textbooks.