Are eTextbooks for everyone? Not necessarily.

As students start to buy their textbooks for this semester, a new utility – the eBook – is gaining substantial popularity and publicity.   However, there is one serious drawback that many eTextbook users have failed to consider – the open book exam. 

While eTextbooks offer some benefits, such as interactive learning and the ability to avoid carrying around heavy textbooks, there are two serious drawbacks for many college students. 

The first is price.   While an eTextbook, in many cases, is downloadable to a laptop, students will have to carry the laptop to their class, find a power outlet, and deal with the possibility that their expensive laptop could be destroyed while on campus.   If a student does not want to carry around their laptop, eReaders are available, but there are some drawbacks.  The first is that the eTextbook that a student downloads may not necessarily be compatible with all eTextbook readers.  While most will work, because of all of the emerging eTextbook companies, this could be problematic.   Furthermore, eTextbook readers are costly in and of themselves, with prices ranging from $100 - $300 or more.  Finally, eTextbooks are usually more expensive than buying, even new textbooks, within the secondary market.   A site like BookDefy compares textbook prices, and generally eTextbooks are 3 or 4 times the cost of what a student could – using BookDefy – find a new textbook for.  

The second drawback – and perhaps the most important – is the case of the open book exam.   When a student is allowed to use their textbook during an exam, most of the time professors will not allow a student to have any electronic equipment available while taking the test.   Therefore, students that use eTextbooks, either on a reader, or on a laptop, may be seriously disadvantaged if a professor offers them the ability to use their textbook while sitting for an exam.   Since computers and most readers not only allow students to store notes and other information, but connect to the Internet, it is doubtful that a professor would allow someone to use these devices – as it would be unfair to the other students that simply have a book.  Furthermore, a student can use an eTextbook (if the software allows it) to print off some chapters, but the added costs of paper, and the fact that a professor cannot guarantee that only the eTextbook information was printed may prevent the student from using this on an open book exam.   Finally, even if a professor did allow printing of an eTextbook, the costs – at an average of $0.10 per page to print, for a 300 or 400 page selection of the text would cost the student up to $40.   If they do this for the midterm and the final, spending $80 in total, the student will spend many times more than what they could have spent buying the textbook in the online market and using a textbook comparison site like BookDefy.

In short, while eTextbooks offer some great, enhanced content and other advantages, they will not necessarily save a savvy student any money, and the student may have to purchase a textbook anyway at either the midterm or the end of the semester – if a professor allows an open book exam.   

Congressional legislation fosters anti-competition and allows private companies to re-cement their monopolies on the campus bookstores.

Recent legislation (specifically, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008), requires universities to post textbook prices and ISBN numbers on their registration website, specifically so that students have an idea of how much their textbooks will cost them.  This act went into law in July of 2010.  

This legislation was created to stop textbook prices which have been climbing rather quickly for the past two decades.  Currently, a full time student will spend over $1,000 for their textbooks each year.   This is a huge burden, especially considering that most students will finance these costs with student loans  - meaning that they could potentially pay back over $24,000 (including interest) for the $4,000 worth of loans they take out while receiving a four-year degree.  

This exorbitant cost is something that legislators attempted to address this by requiring that universities post the ISBN and cost (that the bookstore would charge) associated with a textbook.   This was supposed to be visible on the website when students registered for their classes and was supposed to accomplish two things.  First, it was to give students an idea of what they were going to have to spend to pass the class.  Second, it was designed to foster competition.  Vendors and students could then use the ISBN number to compare prices, and vendors could provide students with a list of textbooks specifically for their classes, without the student having to look up the ISBN from the university bookstore’s website, and then enter it on a price comparison website, such as www.bookdefy.com.  

The Universities found a loophole in this, and many currently have adopted a method that is anticompetitive and further injures the students.  eFollett and Barnes and Noble (the largest two) entered into the campus bookstore management industry.  What this means, is that they lease the bookstore space from the university, and then they sell the textbooks to the students.   The university then provides the campus bookstore with the course information, and then professors are free to provide the bookstore with the ISBN numbers of the textbooks they request in whatever manner that the private bookstore owners request.  In many instances this information is provided electronically and automatically entered into the bookstore owner’s database.

The problem lies here.   These bookstores then post this information online, and they do list the ISBN number for the textbooks, which barely meets the requirements of the previously discussed legislation.   However, they do this in a manner that creates substantial hurdles for any potential competitor of the bookstore, and because they are private companies, they fall outside of many of the regulations these acts put forth, and therefore the students suffer from the anticompetitive landscape these actions create and suffer as they are forced to pay much more for textbooks that they have to purchase.

When an outside competitor (i.e. a company that is trying to offer less expensive books or provide textbook price comparisons for students) wants to display to students of that university the textbook lists that the University has, they can request the course list (which is usually provided very quickly), but when they request the lists of ISBNs that are required for that course, they are told one of two things.  

First, they can physically copy (at their own cost) a printed list from each class (potentially thousands of pieces of paper), or they can go and use the eFollett or Barnes and Noble website, and manually enter each course and copy the respective ISBNs for that course.   This process is exceptionally anti-competitive because it forces competitors to expend a great deal of time, resources and money on something that would take seconds for these companies (Barnes and Noble and eFollett) to provide with a database dump.   Second, the company can manually go, class by class, on the eFollett or Barnes and Noble website and log each textbook – again, a process that could take hundreds of hours for a large university.  These companies are complying with federal law because they still have the ISBN posted on their website.  Furthermore, since these companies (Barnes and Noble / eFollett) invest their own time, by entering the ISBN numbers into their own database (mostly automated now), they “own” this data, and it is outside, generally of a Freedom of Information Act request.  

In short, these companies control the data and can make it as obscenely difficult as possible for a potential competitor to access it.  In essence, they are retrenching their monopolistic ways and making it very difficult for potential competitors – that are working to reduce these high textbook costs – to provide a full solution to students looking to save money.  

This hurts students because it prevents competitors from providing students with textbook lists for their courses.  The student is forced to do the legwork, and because they have to go to the University bookstore’s website (many universities merely provide a dynamic link – so another company cannot simply extract an ISBN) that takes the student to the bookstore (and not to the course).  Therefore, the student, despite the legislation, cannot easily determine what textbooks they need, and finding these books from a site like www.BookDefy.com that compares textbook prices across dozens of online sites, is left purchasing the book from either the bookstore, or the bookstores that can afford to invest the resources, manpower and money in cataloging, re-entering, and re-inventing the wheel so to speak that Barnes and Noble and eFollett require them to.   These local bookstores have only one incentive, that is to provide a book price that is slightly below the college bookstore, but these savings are minimal, when a company like BookDefy could easily save a student 50% or more on the same book.   In short, the student is left with few options, and is forced to buy books at a much higher price, simply because the University is working with a private company that keeps its textbook monopoly alive.

The true costs of textbooks

We all know that textbook costs are increasing on campuses, and the distance between the price offered for a textbook via the buyback price and what that book is then sold to another student at is growing.   However, there are two factors that many do not consider when purchasing a textbook.  

The first is the actual cost of the textbook.  For most students, when they buy a new book, they are spending an immediate $100 - $200 (sometimes less or more – I have seen some books as high as $2000).   This is an immediate cost to the student, but when you consider, if that money was used for something else, there is an opportunity cost.  A student who buys 5 books in a semester could easily spend $500 to $1000. 

  

For the average student, working part time, earning (an above average wage of $10 per hour), this means that the student will net $200 per week, or $800 per month.  However, after taxes (in most areas), the student will bring in $400 - $500 per month.  Therefore, the cost of textbooks – in the immediate sense – is almost two months of wages.   This means, that if a student could avoid the costs of these textbooks, they would be able to in essence not work for two months and focus on school.   

For most students however, they do not have access to this kind of money, and many students choose (even if working) to finance their textbooks with student loans.  The problem with financing textbooks with student loans, is that these book costs have to be repaid in the future.  When you repay student loans, the student is in effect repaying up to three or four times the purchase price of the books.  Meaning, that a $100 book actually costs the student $400, and a $200 book actually costs up to $800!

On average a student takes about 44 classes to graduate, necessitating a minimum of 1 textbook for class, or 44 books.   This means the student pays $4,400 to $8,800 on textbooks.   If financed with student loans, the student will actually pay $13,200 to $26,400 for textbooks while in college!

Of course, this does not take into consideration the opportunity costs of the book, the lower grades a student receives while working in college, or the stress of being broke, or the investments that a student could make with this money (if it weren’t spent on books), or just having money to “blow off steam”. 

  

The second factor to consider with textbooks is the environmental cost.  Textbooks are printed on paper, and when using basic averages (computed at http://www.ehow.com/facts_7210331_many-trees-make-textbook_.html), it is figured that a campus with 10,000 students has the equivalent of 1,680 worth of trees being carried around in their backpacks.  Given the ever decreasing “shelf life” of the average textbook – the life before a new edition is released and required for purchase – the amount of new trees required to be cut down to fill this demand is depleting our natural resources.   

With BookDefy.com, students can recycle their used textbooks – by swapping them.   BookDefy works with professors to allow them to encourage and to assign old editions of textbooks, thus giving life to books that no one else wants, books that were otherwise destined for the landfills.  

BookDefy to Help Students with High Textbook Costs and Help the Environment

BookDefy (www.bookdefy.com) announced today their partnership with Trees for the Future (www.plant-trees.org), BookDefy will donate to plant a tree whenever a textbook is exchanged through www.BookDefy.com or when students compare book buyback and used prices on www.TreesForTextbooks.com.

Textbooks are expensive for students on a limited budget and BookDefy cures this financial crisis by giving students information on the best book prices, best buyback rates and empowers them to privately and safely swap their textbooks with their classmates.

BookDefy gives new life to old textbooks by empowering students to easily, privately and safely swap them. BookDefy works with students and the community and further allows professors to assign older edition; thus giving renewed life to these books that are otherwise destined for the landfill.

BookDefy’s textbook price comparison site, www.TreesForTextbooks.com, does not sell textbooks; it lets students compare buyback and used book prices. Because BookDefy is committed to reducing waste, and to helping students – and the environment, we want to give back, and we will donate to have a tree planted whenever a student buys or sells their books back through our partner sites.

“I started BookDefy because I hated two things about the textbook process for college students,” said Derek Haake, BookDeyf’s founder. “The first is the economic waste created when students resell their books to the bookstores, only for that same book to be resold, at a much higher price to another unsuspecting student. The second is the environmental impact. Books deplete our scarce natural resources, and with our new partner, we can reduce these wastes and give back to the environment.”

About BookDefy:

BookDefy is a free social tool that empowers college students to exchange their textbooks with their classmates and eliminates the middleman – the bookstores - thus keeping money in student’s pockets and giving life to old textbooks. To learn more, visit: http://www.TreesForTextbooks.com.

About Trees for the Future:

Headquartered in Silver Spring, Md. and founded in 1989, Trees for the Future is a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization helping communities around the world plant trees. Through seed distribution, sustainable management and agroforestry training, and in-country technical assistance, it empowers rural groups worldwide to restore tree cover to their lands, protect the environment and help to preserve traditional livelihoods and cultures for generations. To learn more, visit: http://www.plant-trees.org.

Student Debt – Where are we headed and what can we do?

A recent report from the NYT announced that we now have over a trillion dollars in student loan debt in the US.  Politics aside, what does this mean for the average college student?  

Since the 1970s, the purchasing power of the average salary has been cut in half – actually, the average income buys less than half of the goods that the average income in the 1970s does.   What this means, is that two-income families are now the norm – both the husband and the wife are wage earners.  It also means that you have to make double the current average salary in the US to buy the same amount of products / services / etc – to have the same purchasing power – as the average single family worker of the 1970s.   

To get a job in this economy, you have to have a bachelor’s degree, if not an advanced degree.   Tuition rates are increasing each year, and the overall costs of an education are escalating (textbooks for example have increased by 12 – 16% over the past two years – without justification).   These rising costs, coupled with the fact that to compete, both spouses must have a job – and a degree – means that we are working much harder for much less than our 1970s counterparts.

Graduating from college means too that we will have much more debt – that is repaid in 25 years.  Now the interest rates of the 1970s were much higher than they are today, but that is still irrelevant as even at 4.5% means that the average $100,000 student loan (x two for both parents) will mean that the amount repaid for this dual-income household will reach over $614,000.  This amount of debt repayment will limit the family’s ability to start a business, finance a home, save for college for their children (who without college will not have a chance in this new world), and will have a low quality of living.

Things that make an impact are the basics in life for the student.  If a student lives from home, owns their car, packs a lunch and has a part time job, the average student could make it through school just owing tuition – which at a state school is still reasonable.   However, things like buying books - $1000 in a semester results in a repayment of over $3000 for the same books – could save substantially.   Using a site like BookDefy in theory then could save a student (over 8 semesters) $8,000 in the short run, and $24,000 in the long run.   

Running up debt while in school is a very difficult proposition for a student.   Borrowing money needlessly is even more painful.  A ray of hope is the recent legislation that caps repayment at 15% of the student’s income after they graduate helps – but the long-term damage that this can due (the money still has to come from somewhere) may prove this policy impractical. 

Why are social networks dangerous?

Social networks, in and of them, can become a great resource.  The danger from these networks is not from what we do, but how machines interpret the information we put on these networks, and how they obtain this information.  

Obtaining information:
The first issue with social networks that makes them dangerous is how other people can obtain information about you.  Suppose you have all of your information “locked down”, did you know that companies can still acquire information you want to remain confidential.  On Facebook for example, if a company cannot find out information about you, they can pull information about your friends.  If your friend’s information is public (and usually the “friends” that have public information are not people you would normally associate with), then companies can form opinions about you by what they find from these inquiries.  

Second, when you post information to other’s profiles, on their walls, or in their updates, etc., this information becomes “public”.  This information can then be obtained from others without your level of privacy.  

Using this information against you

A new site – www.reppler.com allows you to see the “negative” information about yourself.  This is similar to the reports that hiring managers and other “entities” use when trying to distill information about someone from a social network.  However, even without running these reports, many companies – such as Zynga (owners of Farmville and other sites) will sell them the information they collect about all of their users (and they collect A LOT).  Furthermore, in a recent court case, the courts held that there is no expectation of privacy in information posted online – meaning that the government would not need a warrant to access that information.  Unfortunately, there are many ways for people to get at your “public” – or “private” information, and virtually no protections.

I ran a report on myself today, and I came up with 5 problems.   Two swear words, two alcohol related posts, and a drug reference.   The problem with this is that one of my friends said he needed a “shot of whiskey”, and the swear words – well – they were swear words.  However, I posted none of them.   The “drug” reference was in regards to a friend of mine posting that she was pulling “weeds”.  The other alcohol reference I made was in regards to a posting a newspaper made about BookDefy, and saying that students had limited “beer money”.   

The problem here is evident.  If an employer, future boss, business partner, or other decided to search through my profile to see if I was a profane, alcoholic drug user, a computer would tell them that I was – or at least I was associated with those that are.   In reality though, the posts in context, do not have the “meaning” given to them by these search algorithms.   However, in the end, the computer report, and not the context would make the final decision.   Most people that use these reports do not “dig” into them to find out the context.  They just say, well, this guy had 2 cuss words, 2 alcohol references and a drug reference on Facebook.  Therefore, we are going to give the job away to another person.  

This is the real fear and real issue with social networks, and why we all need to be extra careful out there if we want a future.  

All I wanted to do was play super mario brothers dammit!

In September, I bought an Android cell phone.  I had used Palm my whole life, and I wanted to see what all the Android fuss was about.  

I use my phone as a phone.  Mostly to communicate with friends, but people kept telling me about the games, and that I should play "angry birds".   Well, I went to download this game from Android's market, but instead of searching for "Angry Birds", I searched for Super Mario Brothers.  There had to be someone that remade this classic game of my youth - the game my brother and I frequently induced bloody noses on each other's faces for and during.  

I found one and downloaded it.   I didn't pay attention to the privacy settings. 

Soon, one of my friends, who had given only a handful of people her cell phone number complained to me that she was getting telemarketing calls.  I asked her if she was on the do not call list - she said yes.  I then asked her when she started receiving the calls.  It was a weird conincidence that this happened just a few days after I downloaded the Super Mario Brothers game on my droid. 

Interested, I decided to look at what I authorized the app to use on my phone.   I was very surprised to find out that I had given the application access to my web browser, authorization to read my text messages, access to my phone, and access to all of my contacts.  

I have no idea if this company recorded my contacts and then resold them to other people, but this astonished me.  I would say this was a privacy violation, but I expressly authorized them to do all of this.  Why?  Because I wanted to play Super Mario Brothers.  

I have no idea if this app caused my friend's telemarketing issues, but it woke me up to what all an app on Android has access to.   I recently read an article that many of the Android apps are infected with some type of malware, but with privacy "holes" like this, why would you bother?  Why not just get the user to authorize big brother (like my app) and record everything? 

Casual sex anyone?

College is a time for experimenting, but a new site takes this to a new level.   As reported on MSNBC, students can now begin meeting at a few eligible schools, for “hook ups” – at non other than www.eduhookups.com.    

The site delves into an interesting level of hedonism (some might say), but for others, we know that college is the time for fun, experimenting and making mistakes (before they really matter).   The site encourages safety - http://eduhookups.com/safety.php, and seems to only focus on safe sex practices, but the question is how safe is the site? 

Like BookDefy, the site requires your university e-mail address, and by providing this, there is some level of accountability.   However, there seems to be in inherent amount of danger in meeting random students for “hook ups”.   The probability for crimes against students – even if someone is aware of who the perpetrator may actually be – could be a large liability for students and the company.  Furthermore, unlike BookDefy, when students meet up, they are meeting at their home or other random places with the idea that they will be having sex.  

Again, college is the time for experimenting and fun, and a site like this could be useful for those that want to explore who we are and explore our sexuality.  However, with the prevalence of date rape, students being drugged at bars, and other “exploits” that cause more harm than good, the question is, will the benefits of a “service” like this outweigh the potential harms?   

$4 billion dollars – on textbooks – from students on a limited budget?!?

The average college student will spend $650 on books each year.  Considering there are 12 million students, this inflates to almost $4 billion dollars a year.   Furthermore, when students buy a new textbook, they will on average only recoup 35% to 50% of their costs (according to the AAP).   Bookstores therefore will buy a new book back and profit 65% - 50% off the student, only to resell that book to the next student at two or three times what they gave the first student.  

Students have a limited budget, and the $650 spent is not a very large sum, however, for a student – most of who are on scholarships, working minimum wage jobs, and otherwise have no real income, the $650 is a much larger amount of money.   Furthermore, for students that use loans to pay for their textbooks, the hidden cost – interest – that runs on the loan, inflates this cost to two or three times the original purchase price.     

The real killer is that the bookstores are responsible for a large amount of these costs, as they take profits from the students.  Sure, there is not much of a market for used textbooks, it is hard to resell them to other students, and selling them online is difficult, so selling them at a fraction of the cost, to have the bookstore double or triple their profits when the next student buys the book, is really the only viable, present alternative.  However, if students would hold off on the “immediate gratification” of selling their textbooks back, tools such as BookDefy allow them to swap their books, effectively shrinking the textbook marketplace, and can keep money in the pockets of college students. 

Fleecing college students - and parents out of their money, only to line the pockets of the bookstore owners, that is a travesty.  When you consider $4 billion is spent on new and used textbooks, how much of this money could be saved if we just swap our books?

Double Whammy for BP Victims

According to a recent report from MSNBC, a laptop went missing containing personal information, including social security numbers - of victims of the BP oil spill last summer.

What is profound about this, is that these are first, victims of the oil spill. They were damaged at some level from the BP spill. These people may have lost their livelihoods, their homes, or even a loved one.

Now, with this misplaced laptop - that stored this personal information in an unencrypted format - the victims of the spill may soon be victims of identity theft!

When it comes to identity theft, this is actually the most damaging form of breach. In the last several years, the price of a social security number has fallen (on the black market of course) from around $10-$16 in 2007 to just $0.50 in 2009 - according to Verizon. Part of this is because the prevalence of stolen social security numbers, but outlined in this report is how the data thieves acquire these numbers.

Most people would think that hackers, isolated in a dark room, running command line code against another computer is the most common way that these breaches occur - and it is, but this is far from the most damaging. Hacking accounts for only a small fraction of the breaches that result in your information being stolen.

The two most damaging are 1) internal employee breaches, and 2) a thief gaining personal access to this data (as what happened to BP). In fact, the amount of information stolen from laptops, and other physically accessible computers is staggering, and makes up the bulk of the personal information stolen.

The lesson from this, and unfortunately it is too late for BPs victims - who may become victims again shortly, is that companies need to take better care of their information. Selling customer information, leaving sensitive "victim" data out there to be taken, and other careless or unethical business practices are things that impact all of us.