PDF format has been around for over 18 years. Yes that pales in comparison to the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that's hardly a valid comparison. Old formats can be opened in the new versions of the FREE reader application. BTW, it costs $0.000000000000000001 in electricity to create duplicates of your books in another place such as in your GMAIL inbox. Which, by the way, is on redundant disks, hosted on redundant servers, which have physical off site backup copies, possibly even on multiple CONTINENTS. I'm thinking my electronic data can survive a coffee spill better than a paperback POS. Worst case scenario, you can purchase and download a new copy 24/7. Good luck finding a bookstore with your book in stock and open at 4:00 AM on finals night.

This is a much better argument for paper books but still falls short. The fact is many people just prefer them. Fine. I have no problem with that, but don't make that the only option so you can swindle students. Offer the electronic version for 1/4 the price. Let those who want to buy the full version do so. Let the rest who want a paper copy simply print the PDF off at their own cost. Then they can highlight, scribble notes, etc, without actually modifying the original file.

I guess you can count on higher education to be 10-20 years behind in technology. We're in the midst of the information era, with streaming 1080p to handheld devices/phones, and we expect intelligent college students to pay $400 for a bound pile of paper equvalent to 3-4 MB worth of data? I get there is valuable information contained in that book, but our generation has grown up plugged into the internet. The whole concept of the internet is free or cheap information. It's a tough pill to swallow. Not to mention the situation above when a professor writes his own book, makes it mandatory, rapes you on the price, and happens to be the only professor for that course; which is in turn required for your degree. In my meager 18 months of college I experienced this twice.
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Not to mention pure physical space. When I think of the amount, and weight, of crap I carted about in uni compared to the size of a tablet I just shake my head. Especially given that text books were in my experience typically just reference material I'd guesstimate that 90% of the text books I owned over the course of my degree never had the spine cracked because everything I needed to know for the course was in the lecture material.

Many programs in Canadian universities are now going entirely to ePub and other electronic formats. Several trades schools in my area now require the purchase of an iPad because all materials will be distributed on it and in doing so many programs have cut book costs from several hundred/thousand per year to just $50 - $100 (excluding the one time iPad cost of course).

Physical books will always have their place, however they have less and less importance in daily life. I have over 400 novels and technical reference materials on my iPad... a device that weighs just over 1 lbs and occupies less space than 1 week's worth of handwritten notes (w/o the binder to store them in). When I get around to returning to uni for a masters I can't imagine why I'd ever want to go back to lugging around big heavy textbooks?
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I still read books, and I read them by candlelight! :-) (no, not really...)
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The only point of argument I foresee is the implied (and stated) "blame" for the cost of higher education placed upon the faculty. To me, it is akin to blaming the high cost of an automobile upon the wages of the workers who make it, while giving the CEO who takes home 300 times as much (yes, that is the generally accepted figure with major US corporations these lopsided days) a full pass. Furthermore, it ignores the other expenses involved at any school, large or small, such as the physical plant. Not only are the existing facilities expensive to maintain (how many plumbers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters, masons etc. do you think it takes, and how much do they earn?), but with the increased demand for spaces in colleges there is the concomitant need for expansion. Also, in the case of state-supported schools, the budget crunch that have led legislators to decrease financial support, at the demand of taxpayers mind you, means the schools must make up that shortfall in some way . . . either that, or cut things to the bone, and run the risk of collapse, and a failure of the responsibilities that led to their foundation in the first place. So those taxpayers who, for reasons good or selfish, refused to contribute to higher education via their tax burden are then faced with the alternative of ponying up as much, or more, cake when their children matriculate. Sorry, but their laments fall upon my deaf ears. It's their bed, and they should bear it lumps and all.

As for the relationship between education and business, consider for instance the work of a biochemist in a university lab making whatever 6-figure income you wish to envision, then consider the Big Pharma giant that uses his research in order to charge you $30, $80, $120, $450 for a pill that cost them 7 cents to produce.

And if you have a problem with my "corporate scumbag" remark, I shall only ask you note the potential significance of the :-) I included. :-)
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