According to a study by the California Public Interest Research Group in 2004, students had to spend $900 each year on textbooks during the course of earning a four-year college degree, and that figure is only growing with the price of books. Indeed, the Government Accountability Office found that prices of academic textbooks rose by almost 300 percent from 1986 to 2004.
A recent LA Times article features an interview with Caltech economics professor R. Preston McAfee, who is bucking the trend by offering his students a free, online, open-source textbook. McAfee is (rightly) outraged by the prices charged to what is in effect a captive market. This isn't the first time that overpriced textbooks have been highlighted in the media either.
In 2006, Christopher Rice experimented with a wiki for his Introduction to Political Science class. In addition to online articles, the wiki links to books at Project Gutenberg for older texts. This kept the students' reading list to below $40, an important consideration when tuition seems to go up every year. Students could also collaborate, posting class notes and helping to develop the course.
As can be expected, the textbook industry isn't real pleased with these developments. In addition to the ever-spiraling price of books, possibly in response to the growth of the secondhand market, companies are pushing DRM-laden e-textbooks, which students can obtain for less than a dead-tree copy—but can't scribble notes on and certainly can't resell at the end of the year (although that doesn't stop the students from torrenting them). Open access publishing has had a massive impact on the research side of academia, but much of that has been spurred by funding bodies such as the NIH and others, and the publishers aren't happy about it. Will it take a powerful sponsor for the same to happen in the classroom?