university of maryland | University of Maryland Students stage, textbook rebellion

University of Maryland Students stage, textbook rebellion: College students are going without required textbooks, doing their finest to eke through the semester without shelling out 100s in their campus bookshops. With inexpensive alternatives sparse, a group of college activists backed by the Obama administration is railing versus skyrocketing text edition prices one campus at a time. The Textbook Rebellion, a nationwide tour of forty campuses in fourteen states during the fall semester, kicked off August. Thirty-one at the University of Maryland’s (UMD) College Park campus, where officials from the Student Public Interest inquiry Groups (PIRGs), student leaders, and an Obama administration official rallied for more open-source textbook choices, both internet and in print, that could trim students’ annual $1,000 book bill. Textbook Rebellion launched a website that collects petition sigs aiming to show the widespread support for course textbooks that cost $30 or less, admitting internet books that can be converted to traditional texts through an inexpensive printing process. Student PIRG officials said they hope to collect 10,000 sigs over the next 6 weeks. Hal Plotkin, a senior policy adviser for the America. Education Department (ED) who addressed students and reporters gathered outside UMD’s McKeldin Library said encouraging and incentivizing more open-source textbooks would be a key piece of President Obama’s goal to lead the global in college graduates by 2020. Plotkin, a central figure in the White House’s plans for more free open educational resources, said the administration would soon unveil “substantial grants” for companies and educators willing to make textbooks that could be used on campuses nationwide. Samantha Sperling, a UMD sophomore and the campus’s chapter chair of MaryPIRG, said that the costs of textbooks even on a big campus with students committed to myriad causes has long been a concern for any student who’s to buy a $200 biology or psychology book.University of Maryland Students stage, textbook rebellion