I certainly didn’t keep every textbook, but I have a good box I’ve been carrying around for two decades, and just last month I pulled out one of my old Roman textbooks and gave it to my kid to do research on Rome for his social studies class because I knew it was a good basic resource for what he needed, and he didn’t need the most cutting edge research or anything. But students of today won’t be able to do that. @academicchatter@a.gup.pe #TextbookAffordability

Like, there was some of that when I was an undergrad 20 years ago, I certainly sold back some of my books. But ebooks and book rentals weren’t as much of a thing, certainly not this current trend of “affordable access” publishers are doing where you pay a monthly fee for access and then when you stop paying the fee you lose access to that resource. And it just makes me really sad that students today are unable to hang onto useful course materials like I was able to.