Re: Education
"Books were a major cost to schools."
The exorbitant cost of textbooks was/is the textbook publishers taking their pounds of flesh from a largely captive market - the printers and authors not so much. Still pretty much the case with scientific publishing.
University students mostly cannot afford textbooks so courses mostly don't specify required texts but refer to library reserve holdings, lecturer's online notes and paper handouts as well as online material available from the likes of MIT.
I am wondering whether some the various fairly decent textbooks that authors/copyright holders have donated as etexts to the world could with their consent be printed cheaply in volume in a student edition paperback format. India up until the 90s used to print local only editions of major science and math etc textbooks for less than a USD1.00 (at the time.) Back then I picked up a few that had escaped India, from second bookshops in AU (particularly the now long gone SKOOB Books†.)
A lot of the English literature resources used in schools are public domain and available from Gutenberg, Fadedpage etc which could be reset and printed.
† Nearly fifty years later the Dianetics mob opposite are still there peddling their codswallop. "Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
