I don't see this happening. College book industry is big $$$. Switching to digital medium opens up the doors to sharing, copying, pirating. Why would these companies want to open themselves up to that? We're talking about the same companies that screw students by reprinting new versions every 2 years (do we need these? how much has algebra and calculus changed in the past few decades...) with chapters and sections moved around and problems renumbered just to force students and schools to purchase new books intead of recycling the old versions.

I think copying and pirating ebooks will be harder than you think. With ereader devices constantly being connected, both you and your (pirating) buddy's readers will constantly be dialing in to see if its content is "authorized". Duping that DRM will be difficult, ongoing, and time-consuming.
Actually, that's my biggest beef with all ebooks. I don't like a publisher/retailer/etailer being able to peer into my device and, at their discretion, add or remove books (Google Kindle, 1984 for more details on that true story).

Call me a luddite, but if I buy a book, then it should be mine - period.

More dead trees please...

After the first semester I bought all my books online (CS major for reference) and the cost difference for the dead tree was not that much more compared to an ipad. And even then I'd have to buy the device and then buy the books that aren't going to be much of a discount over the print books.

Also, pirating books on the major platforms right now isn't very hard. Just FYI.

I consider myself a gadget addict as well as a book addict, but I've been holding off on an ereader and/or ipad-ish gadget. Not for any particular reason, but I wish there was some sort of happy medium. As a graphic artist I feel the pinch that other artist feel about there art not truly making the transition to the difital world.
I certainly not opposed to light book loads - been there & done that! I'm intrigued by the digital concept - not threatened by it. However, I heard a joke on NPR about one day kids might be handed a book & they will poke at the cover wondering why it won't do anything (like a touch screen) - so funny to me, but then made somewhat true when I went to my local book store searching for a particular book & handed a sales clerk the ISBN number. He replied how much easier it was when people used the ISBN number & how discouraged he was that many people don't even know what this was. I asked if he was joking, & I could tell by the look on his face that he was not.
I know this "not knowing" could happen with anything ( and does), but the gadget lover in me also loves the artistic beauty of holding a actual book. I'm so torn, but in the rference of schools - I'm also torn.
Interesting read & thoughts nonetheless!!

Anybody who thinks it's difficult to pirate eBooks (or anything for that matter...) is clearly not adept in pirating. Kudos to you for being an upstanding citizen!

Perhaps I’m biased, as you’ll have to rip my books out of my cold dead hands, but I personally don’t see this transition happening anytime soon. Individual colleges might jump on the bandwagon, but it’s a hard pill to swallow for many students to shell out the money for a device they may not want, and will be obsolete very soon, as well as their required texts. Additionally, obscure, out-of-print, and highly specialized texts (I had all of these required for classes at one point or another) are not likely to make the leap to digital in the near future.

As far as primary education [which I assume is being included in these numbers based on the references they give], the likelihood of that occurring is even less. Parents aren’t likely to pay the money every year to buy their children new textbooks, and new devices every 2-3 years; and I can guarantee you that the system won’t pay for them.

You left out the part about how when you buy an e-copy, you only have access to it for a finite time period. That might be fine for some people, but I need most of my chemistry and biology textbooks as references for other classes. Them suddenly disappearing after a year or two would be a huge problem for me. And while I'd love to trade in my 8-12 pound textbooks for an iPad, it's also a lot harder to read a computer screen than paper.

Young people will say anything. They are probably LOLing right now because the old people doing the survey don't understand that, like, sex is such an old fashioned word no one uses anymore and they don't really have to abstain from anything. Millions of teens are owling one another right now. Or something. 97% of me does not trust the survey results.

Grade school kids read a lot more on ereaders, according to a recent article. They love reading that way.

My kids re-sold most of their college texts ~ which were a lot costlier than what I paid in the 70s. (But that ain't nothing compared to skyrocketing tuition ~ and yes that's taking inflation into account.)

Seems like some types of textbooks are more useful in print, others moreso on ereaders (as previous posters have explained).

Could be nice if publishers could offer both options.