Uniform textbook selection helps Arizona college cut costs

FromUSA Today: Most conversations about reducing spending on college textbooks center on e-books as cheaper, nimbler, and more era-appropriate alternatives. But Rio Salado College, a mostly online community college in Arizona, has taken a different tack: using the same printed textbooks in all sections of each course. And so far, it reports substantial savings for students and few complaints from faculty. By only ordering one book per course, rather than allowing each professor to choose a book, Rio Salado has been able to purchase volumes in bulk. The result? Publisher discounts that let the college retail the books to students for about 50 percent of what they used to have to charge in order to break even.