Cal State Long Beach is part of a new program that started in the fall semester, which will help offset expensive textbook prices for students.
Several textbook publishers have teamed up with four other Cal State Universities including; Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, San Bernardino and San Francisco in order to provide online textbooks, as an alternative to traditional print books. The result is up to 65 percent off retail value.
Major publishers involved in the program include Bedford, Freeman, Worth, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and John Wiley and Sons.
The CSU system offers 32 courses, which will use online textbooks, seven of them at CSULB.
CSULB political science professor Richard Haesly is part of the pilot program.
“Once I heard the price and their willingness to get the feedback from the students about what they like and don’t like about the program, I was convinced that it would be worth trying,” he said.
Haesly’s Introduction to American Government class uses a textbook that normally costs $110, but the online version will only cost students $39.90.
Biology major Josue Maranda is using the online textbook for one of Haesly’s political science classes.
“It’s convenient. It’s okay for a general education class, but for upper division classes, it would be nice to have the book so I can use it later,” Maranda said.
“They seem like a good idea, but students can only access them via laptops, iPhones, iPads, and other forms of technology, which means the poor student now has to pay more money for this ‘inexpensive’ book,” junior journalism major Denise Bender said.
Students are also concerned about is selling the books back at the end of the semester.
“Students can’t sell them at the end of the semester to get some of their money back,” Bender said.
The program is scheduled to continue and eventually expand for the spring semester, depending on feedback from students, faculty and publishers.
Haesly is considering using the program again next semester.
“If a [large] majority of the students are indifferent or prefer an online book to a physical one, and the costs could be kept to the level that makes the online book competitive with the used textbook market, then I might be in favor of finding a way to make the online textbook more widespread,” Haesly said.
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