Years ago, when I taught at a community college, I regularly suggested that the time would soon come when certain core courses that do not require expendable supplies (such as math), and that readily lend themselves to computerized support, could be offered with zero cost to students for textbooks and ancillary materials. I might have added "and toss out the instructors, too) but the coffee maker was over by the math department, and they were useful for that purpose.

I should note that I had been first in my family to graduate high school, much less go to college, and even with low tuition the cost of textbooks was high. The same applies to today's community college students, who may pay low tuition, but yet pay the same for textbooks as if they went to Harvard.

I should also note that my proposal for free materials, seeing as how the underlying knowledge was generic and in the public domain, was icily rejected by the movers and shakers of the math department, who did not have to do research and spent their time creating over-priced texbooks, with limited shelf life, for college publishers.

The subject I taught was a science with more recent and unique content. However, virtually all of it was provided to the public domain by the government agencies that funded the research. It also could have been provided free to students. However, my departmental peer did not like that idea, seeing as how he spent his spare time... you've heard this before.

Why didn't I do it myself? I got out of the racket while I could still rub two brain cells together.