The Quebec Public Interest Research Group at McGill (QPIRG-McGill) opened registration for its newly-launched Free Textbook Loan Program on Sept. 11. The program, largely funded by the Arts Undergraduate Society’s (AUS) Arts Undergraduate Improvement Fund (AUIF), allows students to borrow textbooks donated by other students for free. QPIRG-McGill is a[Read More…]
Tag: Textbooks
SSMU advocates for affordable textbooks and Open Education Resources
Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) began promoting Open Education Resources (OER), which makes textbooks more accessible by providing them free of charge. Despite rising tuition and textbook costs since the 1970s, the digitization of academia due to the pandemic has[Read More…]
Courses of action for course materials
A new semester means new classes—and expensive textbooks. For many students, the first place that comes to mind for new textbooks is Le James at the corner of Sherbrooke and University, which gets jam-packed with students during the first few weeks of September and January. However, outside of the campus[Read More…]
It’s time to end the era of wasteful and overpriced textbooks
The beginning of each school year is a time of fresh excitement and a newfound enthusiasm to study for many students. This inevitably leads to either furiously stalking Facebook Marketplace for a specific set of textbooks, or giving up and waiting in line at Le James or Paragraphe. No matter[Read More…]
Textbook costs need more than a textbook solution
Post-secondary textbooks are expensive. Any McGill student can attest to this: For many, spending hundreds of dollars at the bookstore is an unfortunate reality of every semester. Others turn to scouring the internet for alternatives and older editions of required texts, or pawning off last year’s gargantuan, intro-level books on[Read More…]
Betrayed
Commentary: For cheaper textbooks, an open source approach
As the semester ramps up, we students have probably shelled out considerable amounts of money for this semester’s textbooks.
