Amazon's Last Resort: Shopping for Books in the Digital Age

[Sophia]

This is still done here in primary and secondary schools. Schools get new books for each student when they are issued and they just borrow them for a year. At the end of school year, books are returned back and given to next class of students. It was pretty standard to use 10-15 years old books until our beloved government begun inventing a completely new curriculum almost each year. Now we have a different problem, the authors simply don't manage to produce new textbook each year so that it is very common that students don't have books for a couple of months until they are released. This has now been happening like 6-7 years in a row and we have learned to expect reports about missing textbooks at the beginning of each school year. But hey! We have 3 or 4 various curriculums at primary schools now! Each cohort has different standards depending on the year they started their education. So the life expectancy of a textbook is like 1-2 years now.
I remember that we used 20 years old textbooks for Music at elementary school and more than 20 years old Slovak language textbook at high school. Now that was very funny because it was written before the revolution and it still included chapter about giving enthusiastic speech about socialist regime and celebrating the Communist Party. :-) We made fun of it because at the age of 16-17 we didn't even remember the old regime which ended when we were 1-2 years old. :-)
Only university students have to buy their books themselves.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here's a depressing article:

Millennial voter disengagement has corresponded with increased financial hardship. The Generation Opportunity report found that a lack of employment opportunity has contributed to the doubling of poverty levels among young people to 16 percent in 2013, compared with the 8 percent experienced by early baby boomers at a similar point in their lives. Some 48 percent of millennials have said they now believe that the American Dream is dead — a view that the new report says has been exacerbated by the high cost of student debt.

Last March, Obama unveiled a Student Bill of Rights along with a raft of new policies aimed at fixing the nation's student loan system. Obama has implemented a series of changes to education over the course of his two terms in office, including increasing Pell grants, introducing tax credits for college, implementing a 2010 Student Loan Forgiveness program, and proposing last January to make two years of community college free for responsible students. While these reforms have won varying levels of support and success, student debt and defaults have continued to rise, surpassing $1.3 trillion in 2015.

The lack of economic opportunity for millennials has led them to delay significant life events, such as getting married or buying a home. Only 36 percent of Americans under 35 now own a home, according to the report — the lowest level on record since home ownership was measured by age. Meanwhile, 26 percent of millennials said that they still lived at home with their parents.

https://news.vice.com/article/young...-american-dream-is-dead?utm_source=vicenewsfb

 

[Hornbein]

Here's a depressing article:
https://news.vice.com/article/young...-american-dream-is-dead?utm_source=vicenewsfb

Look at the bright side. The banking system is doing great.