Kindle Nation Newsletter

Families Are Spending More On Supplies For College Education

Enrollment at colleges and universities throughout the country is up, some resources about graduate degree programs say and, in some instances, is reaching record numbers. Back to school spending results have yet to come in. When it comes to shopping for college, university and technical school supplies, parents and students might find themselves looking less toward pens and spiral notebooks and more toward products such as the newer iPads, or laptops or netbooks with webcams.  Textbooks can be priced even higher.

On the one hand, families have reported working longer hours and relying on more money from sources such as scholarships and grants to pay for college, a Fannie Mae report released earlier this year showed. On the other, retailers depend on the back to school season for sales, and new technologies are becoming more of the norm on 21st century college campuses. For distance learners and those participating in online courses, webcams, iPads and other e-readers, along with mobile devices such as smartphones, might particularly be more often be a part of instruction than they had in the past.

How much do families intend to spend on back to school shopping? About $55.12 billion, which includes spending on the part of families of students at the K-12 levels, a National Retail Federation survey on grants to go back to school reports. The National Retail Federation Back to School/College survey was released in about mid-August, by which time families had reported completing about 43 percent of their back to school shopping. Parents of college age children, however, were waiting it out.

There are opportunities to save money and find the right back to school needs for college and university students, and newspapers and magazines have been doing their homework as a means of helping families find them. One of the most widely distributed on the Internet comes from the Louisville Journal-Courier. While this article doesn’t mention e-readers such as the Kindle, Nook or iPad, it does point readers toward stores where they can find USBs and other products priced between $58 and $350. The iPad, according to Apple’s website, starts at $499, while the latest Kindle might be purchased for about $380.

In Oklahoma, a university noted that it plans to test e-readers on campus, according to an article about distance learning program in USA Today. Several other institutions have also employed the use of e-readers. The devices allow students the ability to download textbooks, and digital textbooks on sites such as CourseSmart, CafeScribe and Wikibooks can be found at prices such as $45.75. This particular offering, a kinesiology textbook from CourseSmart, saves students $68.31, the site notes. Students can also purchased used textbooks for as low as $1.30 on sites such as Valore.com, CampusBookRentals.com and chegg.com, or rent them for about $50, give or take.

The National Retail Federation survey announcement, in fact, reports that many parents of college students report plans to shop online and at electronics stores as well as at department stores. Since regulations that are part of a Credit Card Act of 2009 apply to many college-aged students, parents might also play a more hands-on role in back to school shopping than they traditionally have. A recent Market Watch report noted that individuals who are younger than 21, as part of the Credit Card Act, are no longer able to get credit cards unless they have co-signers or can prove income that allows them to pay bills as required.

This might come as a relief to some parents as they plan for back to school shopping for college supplies. Many parents might also be combining the back to school needs of their children with that of themselves. Adults returning to college are contributing to the upward direction of college and university enrollments, reports show. Many are going back to school for an education that can help them land jobs; many also are heading back to school as a means of keeping their existing jobs, according to reports. Still others are taking college and university courses for personal reasons. That was the case among parents of K-12 students who, in a distance learning survey, reported taking online courses.

Many college campuses these days employ video and web conferencing and podcasts as part of their instruction, particularly online school programs. This in itself might help adults enhance workplace required technology skills. College students searching for back to college grants and scholarships most certainly will employ online technology to do so and may just do this on their new netbook or iPad.

Cry of the Streets (12 of 18): Underground Hip-Hop – ALIAS

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Kindle Nation: The Weekly Email Newsletter for Kindle Users – February 2009 Digest (DRM-Free with Text-to-Speech Enabled, User-Friendly) $2.99 Kindle Nation — a digest of daily posts from the Kindle Nation Daily — is a weekly email newsletter by Stephen Windwalker, author of several books about the Kindle, the Kindle for iPhone App, and other innovations in the world of books. You may sign up to receive the newsletter as a free email each week at my A Kindle Home Page web site or at http://tinyurl.com/JoinKindleNation. You may also vie…