Student Groups Pressure Colleges Over the Insane Cost of Textbooks

[Coventina]

3. I can only speak for my discipline: Art History.

The high cost of textbooks in my discipline comes down to one thing: the insanity of copyright law.

Every image in an art book has to be paid for, making the textbooks outrageously expensive.

Think education falls under "fair use"? Think again!! The educational institutions are terrified of being sued for using someone's photograph of the Mona Lisa that hasn't been licensed. The only way to be safe is to buy from a publisher that does all that front-end work for you.

Personally, I am planning on moving all my classes to ArtStor. It is an online database that does all the work, and you simply pay a fee to access it. Because our library has ArtStor, my students can access it for "free" with the cost of their tuition.