I just came across a good no-nonsense article from Robert Brooker, a University of Minnesota science professor who could moonlight as a debate coach if genetics and biology ever bore him. His topic is the cost of textbooks, which is nearly universally deplored as too high. His rebuttal--as befits one immersed daily in the scientific method--is to calmly respond with some facts.
Brooker quotes a statistic that the average undergraduate spends $700 a year on textbooks. When you're writing it ... yes ... that's a pretty big check. But as usual, context kinda matters here. Considered within the total average cost of obtaining a four-year degree, textbooks account for a mere seven percent. The return for this, Brooker suggests, is perhaps fifty percent of a student's learning. Hmmm, that sounds like a return on investment that would make a Fortune 500 executive giddy.
But wait a minute! Maybe we're being schnookered by Brooker! Those college professors talk pretty fancy, you know. But Brooker adds this salient stat: the College Board's 2007 discovery that full-time workers with college degrees earn over 60 percent more than their counterparts holding only high-school diplomas.
Okay, my turn now. If you can parlay four years and $3,000 worth of textbooks into sixty percent more earnings (simply by holding the degree that those textbooks enable), you'll more than recoup your investment in just a few months. In that context, textbooks are perhaps the best buy that an ambitious American could make. In fact, books that enable the content to stick more securely--and I'm speaking of audio textbooks, of course--are even better buys. Yes, even if the sticker price climbs further still.
But Brooker's analysis isn't flawless. For with textbook mythologies now neatly dispensed, attention will inevitably turn somewhere. Faculty salaries, anyone?
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