Stanley Kurtz writes for National Review Online about a disturbing trend in American higher education.
For the moment, I’m not talking about a story you may have already heard: the growing inability of college students to read full books, or even lengthy scholarly articles. … I’m focusing here on a different story, one that’s barely been reported: Colleges are increasingly forcing students to swap out physical books for digital texts.
There’s a whole bunch of problems with digital textbooks. For starters, there’s a solid consensus among researchers that physical books are superior to digital texts for learning, particularly when it comes to long-form exposition and argument — exactly what’s needed in college. For another thing, in the new dispensation, students lose access to their digital textbooks when the course is over. Imagine an economics major who can’t refer back to his Econ 101 tome, or an English major who loses notes and markings she’s made in her sophomore copy of Shakespeare — not to mention the copy itself. Meanwhile, those with less interest in retaining their textbooks — or of greater financial need — can’t sell their digital texts on the secondary market, like they can their physical books. Then there are the privacy issues. Professors and publishing companies can tell whether you’ve cracked your digital textbooks, for how long, and even what passages you’ve highlighted. There’s also evidence that publishers are collecting personal information, even when they say they’re not.
So, why are America’s colleges and universities leading the charge away from physical books? And what can be done to stop what I and a great many students and professors think is a bad idea? …
… All that changed in early 2016, however, when the Obama Department of Education (DOE) promulgated what is commonly known as Rule 164. While the Obama DOE said that it had “initially considered prohibiting institutions from including books and supplies as part of tuition and fees,” it eventually changed its mind and devised a rule that would allow colleges and universities to effectively impose Inclusive Access on the vast majority of their students.
