eBook Readers in Higher Ed…Counter Evolution?

The StarTribune offered up some future perspective on the growth of e-Book readers – purpose build machines for novels and textbook materials. Despite the rosy growth outlook by the quoted analyst, I am hesitant to think this is going to work in higher education.

Students today are sporting cell phones, netBooks and laptops that are redefining themselves every 6 months. When I visit a campus, it’s not unusual to see someone with an iPhone, switching to a laptop, then back to their phone. This generation of students likes to multi-task between music, Facebook and assignments. The challenge with introducing (or forcing) these students to buy purpose-built machines is they already have considerable computing power that gets cheaper and looks better each time a semester changes. A brand new HP Laptop now costs $650!

Will students want to switch to a purpose specific device they will need to care for, charge and maintain? Their teachers are posting LINKS, Powerpoints and PDFs to Blackboard or WebCT. Students today, are accustom to using industry standard browsers and school supplied desktop software in their labs. Unless Sony (Kindle) is a PC in waiting, then I for one think the likelihood of eBook readers going mainstream in higher ed is very low.

If I were making such decisions at a publishing company, I would consider user/buyer psychographics, the ubiquity of existing consumer devices, support issues and the total cost of equipping a student.

The Apple iPhone was a device that converged several products into one. Imagine if they had produced a purpose built text reader, so consumers or students could have books read to them?