THE AVERAGE course packet at Brillig Books costs $34.61. The cost of the same materials posted to Toolkit or Collab? $0. Required course packets generate unnecessary costs to students' wallets, time and the environment. With this in mind, more professors should post their class materials online.
Course packets, which consist of bound copies of assigned class readings, are often required by professors who wish to assign a few chapters from different books or various articles. Students must go to Brillig Books or the Copy Shop, both located on the Corner, to pick up these readings. Once there, each student will shell out an average of over $30 per packet, with some courses requiring up to three or four packets. On the whole, there are over 100 different packets at Brillig alone, just for the Fall 2008 semester.
Course packets are so costly for two reasons. First, there is the cost of the paper and copying itself. Second, Brillig Books and the Copy Shop are commercial enterprises selling the packets for profit, and they must pay copyright fees to publishers. On the other hand, materials posted online on Toolkit or Collab are exclusively for educational purposes without any commercial profit, therefore fair use standards exempt them from copyright fees within certain guidelines. All things considered, this online option is better for students.
While professors may think that an added $34.61 is an insignificant cost compared to a college education as a whole, they should especially consider those students with the fewest financial resources. If every course required one course packet, the annual cost to each student would be nearly $350. To many of our peers who are on financial aid and who have already taken out loans to finance their education, this is not an insignificant expense. The University currently estimates that books and supplies cost students over $1,000 each year. This is a figure that professors should seek to reduce in every way possible.
In fact, professors can transition to optional course packets without any additional effort. Instead of bringing the materials to Brillig Books or the Copy Shop each semester, they would take the readings to Alderman Library and have them scanned and posted online. Students who like to highlight or prefer not to read from a computer screen could still get their own course packets. Any student who wanted could save the documents onto a CD or a USB drive and take it to Brillig or the Copy Shop for printing. Whitney French, an employee of Brillig Books, noted that her store already offers this service. This semester, at least ten students from one Politics class made their own course packets this way. There is no reason why every course packet cannot become optional using this system.
As mentioned earlier, however, there are some restrictions on Toolkit and Collab materials. According to the University of Virginia Interlibrary Services, materials scanned for online posting must meet "Fair Use Guidelines under the U.S. copyright law" or professors must obtain permission from the copyright holder. There are, sadly, no hard and fast rules for what is "fair use" and what is not. In general, nonprofit educational use of a limited portion of a work for a limited amount of time is permitted. The library, for example, permits professors to upload one chapter of a book or one article from a journal and requires that the material be for an "instructional use."
These guidelines do somewhat limit the use of online materials, but much of what is currently published in course packets could also be posted to Toolkit or Collab for free. Even when fair use guidelines are not met, professors can still request permission from the copyright holder. The University Library has online and in-person resources available for professors who wish to publish online materials that do not fit fair use guidelines but are still educational in nature.
By making this simple change - putting materials online instead of forcing students to purchase paper copies - we can save time, save money and help the environment. Online materials would be free, or at least cheaper, and more convenient for students. Reducing the number of pages that are printed would also reduce the strain on our natural resources, a strain that is even greater when one considers how many course packets are discarded at the end of the semester.
As students we have a duty to our classmates from less advantaged backgrounds. We must seek to make every aspect of the college experience as accessible as possible. In cases like this, professors can play an integral part in accomplishing this goal. Working together, professors and students can make the dream of an affordable education a little more real by eliminating required course packets.
Isaac Wood's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at i.wood@cavalierdaily.com.
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