How many teaching colleagues have the same experience nearly every year when the majority of students hand in costly textbooks with barely a sign that they have been read?

The educational publisher Pearson has announced that it its phasing out printed versions of many of their major textbooks preferring instead to shift towards students renting digital versions of texts which they claim can be updated more frequently.

Essentially it is about cutting fixed or over head costs of production and a long overdue response the the fact that few students ever rely exclusively on printed, weighty and largely impenetrable texts.

The crucial question is whether the price of these digital resources will be significantly cheaper than the print versions? Will students be able to annotate their digital resources? But will they lose access to their annotations once the subscription ends? Are there risks from a wider move away from printed resources that students can focus on?

Remember too that a subscription model gives Pearson a huge amount of data which will have commercial value.

For too many years to remember, the major print publishers have been charging excessive prices for their textbooks, but a Netflix generation simply won't buy bulky texts and school budgets are also under severe pressure.