UMUC Says No More Textbooks, Students Save Millions

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Higher education almost always means higher cost. That includes the soaring prices for textbooks.

Alex DeMetrick reports one branch of the University of Maryland is reducing the cost of books to zero.

Nearly all students returning to colleges in Maryland make the bookstore one of their first stops. The University of Baltimore is typical. So is the cost of textbooks assigned to a course.

"It's one of the biggest expenses in college. All we do is spend money on textbooks. A lot of the times, you won't even use the textbooks in class and we just wasted our money," said Julian Brown, University of Baltimore.

"If you sell your books, it's like, unbelievable. Two-hundred dollars for a book and then you end up getting like $30 if you sell it," said Shania Alford, University of Baltimore.

"We've seen students are spending about $1,200 or so a year on textbooks. In this case, students aren't paying that at all," said Aric Krause, the dean of University of Maryland University College.

The primarily online University of Maryland University College is forgoing books for free information available on the Internet from instructors, reference sources and published articles.

"We've done some preliminary analysis and we've found that students learn just as well, if not better, using this form of learning resource as opposed to textbooks," said Krause.

Joe Wood is provost for the University of Baltimore, and while he sees UMUC's approach as a growing trend, not all colleges or all courses will do away with textbooks. It depends on what it takes to teach.

"So many of their courses, the majority are online, they've got people scattered all over the world. Just getting textbooks to people has to be a big chore," Wood said.

How far other universities will go in following UMUC's lead remains to be seen, but students at the University of Baltimore are ready right now.

"Hopefully all schools get that. I know everybody in the country would be excited about that," said Brown.

UMUC says eliminating textbook costs will save its 64,000 undergrad students millions of dollars a year.