Having two sons in college, I’ve kept a close eye on the costs of higher education. Just about everything seems like it’s twice as costly as it was 20 years ago. I recently read an article that looked at the fact that textbooks cost 191% (or almost 2x) what they back in 1998. Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell the whole picture.
Many textbooks now require a code for online content. Or a slight change was made between editions so you can’t buy a used copy of an old edition. As a result, students are having to buy new editions because the old editions can’t be used.
Then there are additional fees that weren’t charged 20 years ago. Student activity fees, athletic fees, etc. Going to college has become increasingly more expensive. Needless to say, that means folks are having to go more and more in debt to be able to get a college degree.
Several prominent people like Mike Rowe who have spoken out about this college or bust mentality that we have in the US as well as the increasing cost to get there. The reality is we should want more affordable opportunities for education available to more and more people. And while we need folks for jobs that don’t require a college education, critical jobs, if someone decides to tackle more education, it should be affordable. However, I don’t see us getting there fast.
One of the things we can do to offset the costs is to take advantage of free or low cost methods of learning. One of the greatest resources in our communities is a resource a lot of folks are starting to say is unneeded. That’s the library. However, as educational costs continue to increase, having the ability to check out books for free that we couldn’t afford to get out hands on otherwise seems to me a more and more important investment for our communities. If anything, we should be pushing libraries more, not less.
Then there are online communities. I’m not just talking about online education sites like Coursera or EdX. I mean communities on Facebook, Twitter, and other forums. My main technical area is around Microsoft SQL Server. We talk a lot about #SQLFamily and how we’re out to help each other. There’s even a popular twitter tag, #SQLHelp, for folks to ask questions and others in the community try to respond with advice and next steps.
Libraries, online communities, and other methods of free or low cost learning are critical as educational costs continue to increase. Even if educational costs weren’t increasing, these sources are still important. Rather that saying they’re dead, we should be championing them more.