Any price is too much. 99% of the time 99% of people in university are not learning anything cutting edge, they're learning old things to prepare them to learn

Any price is too much. 99% of the time 99% of people in university are not learning anything cutting edge, they're learning old things to prepare them to learn new things. There are plenty of works out of copyright (or that never were in copyright) that can be used themselves, or that could be stitched together to create complete courses. This seems like a basic thing that governments should be doing, but governments never do anything that would "crowd out" rent-seekers, because they're the servants of rent-seekers. Maybe, if you're a multi-billionaire, use one of those billions to put together enough unencumbered material to fill a wide-ranging university program? Or if you're a university, while you're committing to open-access, make a commitment to your students that all of the materials that they'll need will be available freely, on the net, if at all possible? So many billions sloshing around, so many people claiming the problem is so complicated, when it looks very simple. It's as manufactured a problem as the idea that taxes are so complicated that the IRS can't figure them out. edit: and succinctly, > I think that high textbook prices is one of the many little signals we sent young people, for the last 3-5 decades, that we are not interested in creating a better world for them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36186362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36186362