“I told Zach we are putting him on a hug diet — one to say hello and one to say goodbye,” said Joyce Downing, who helped start a new program at the University of Central Missouri that serves students with disabilities.

The hope is that polishing up on social skills, like cutting back on the hugs, living in residence halls and going to classes with non-disabled classmates will help students like Neff be more independent and get better jobs.

In years past, college life was largely off-limits for students with such disabilities, but that’s no longer the case. Students with Down syndrome, autism and other conditions that can result in intellectual disabilities are leaving high school more academically prepared than ever and ready for the next step: college.

Eight years ago, disability advocates were able to find only four programs on university campuses that allowed students with intellectual disabilities to experience college life with extra help from mentors and tutors. As of last year, there were more than 250 spread across more than three dozen states and two Canadian provinces, said Debra Hart, head of Think College at the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston, which provides services to people with disabilities.

That growth is partly because of an increasing demand for higher education for these students and there are new federal funds for such programs.

The federal rules that took effect this fall allow students with intellectual disabilities to receive grants and work-study money. Because details on the rules are still being worked out, the earliest students could have the money is next year. Hart and others expect the funds to prompt the creation of even more programs.

“There is a whole generation of young people who have grown up under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and to them it (college) is the logical next step,” Hart said.

The college programs for these students vary. Generally the aim is to support the students as they take regular classes with non-disabled students. Professors sometimes are advised to modify the integrated classes by doing things like shifting away from a format that relies entirely on lectures and adding more projects in which students can work in groups.

One program in Idaho offers classes in drama, art and sign language. Students on other campuses can improve their computer skills or take child development classes.

Sometimes they’re paired with non-disabled students and advocates say the educational coaches, mentors and tutors who help them often are studying to become special education teachers or social workers and learn from the experience too.

Disability advocates say only a small percentage of these students will receive degrees, but that the programs help them get better jobs.

Historically, adults with intellectual disabilities have been restricted primarily to jobs in fast food restaurants, cleaning or in so-called “sheltered workshops,” where they work alongside other disabled people and often earn below-minimum wages, said Madeleine Will, vice president of the National Down Syndrome Society.

With additional training, Hart said participants can go on to do everything from being a librarian’s assistants to data-entry work in an office.

Much remains to be learned about what type of program works best, but Hart said that will likely change.

Besides allowing for federal financial aid for these programs, Congress also has appropriated $10.56 million to develop 27 model projects to identify successful approaches.

The infusion of federal money has generated some criticism. Conservative commentator Charlotte Allen said it’s a waste to spend federal tax dollars on the programs and insisted that calling them college dilutes the meaning of college.

“It’s a kind of fantasy,” said Allen, a contributing editor for Minding the Campus, a publication of the fiscally conservative Manhattan Institute. “It may make intellectually disabled people feel better, but is that what college is supposed to be all about?”

Oftentimes students with these disabilities stop their formal education when they finish high school, which is usually around the age of 21. Some districts have a partnership with colleges under which the district pays for their 18- to 21-year-old students to take higher education classes. In other cases, college costs are paid for by the parents.

Their children previously haven’t been eligible for grants and work study money because they generally weren’t seeking a degree and wouldn’t have been admitted to college through the typical process.

These programs look “at higher education for what it’s purpose in our community and our culture is — to provide opportunities for learning,” said Meg Grigal, a researcher who works with Hart.

Back at the University of Central Missouri, Neff and another participant in the program for students with developmental issues, Gabe Savage, laugh with friends during lunch in their residence hall cafeteria.

Savage, a 26-year-old from Kansas City, is grateful for it all — new friends, the chance to try out for a school play, brush up on his computer skills and even take a bowling class with non-disabled students looking to earn a physical education credit.

“It’s an answer to my prayer that I am here,” he said. “I always wanted to do this.”

More youths with mental disabilities going to college

More youths with mental disabilities going to college

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says almost every chance he gets that Republicans would cut education spending by 20 percent if their party wins control of Congress in the Nov. 2 elections. He also says they would repeal a new college tuition tax credit.

But as Obama makes these assertions to draw contrasts between the parties and give voters a reason to keep Democrats in power on Capitol Hill, he’s leaving out some important facts.

Take his claims about the Republican campaign plan, the Pledge to America.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — An occasional look at assertions by public officials and how well they adhere to the facts.

___

Obama says Republicans would pay to keep a set of expiring tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans by cutting spending on education, an area where he’s investing billions of dollars from kindergarten through college.

“And when you ask them, well, how would you pay for some of this stuff, they don’t really have good answers,” Obama said Sept. 28 in Albuquerque, N.M., shortly after Republicans released the plan. “But one way they would pay for it is to cut back our education spending by 20 percent and eliminate about 200,000 Head Start programs, and reduce student aid to go to college for about 8 million students.”

He’s argued the point almost daily since then, from discussions on the economy in voters’ back yards to statements in the sunny White House Rose Garden.

But the GOP plan doesn’t say that. A search of the document doesn’t find the word “education” anywhere in its 48 pages.

The White House says the claim is based on an analysis by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of the Republicans plan’s proposal to return federal spending to 2008 levels. A White House spokeswoman says the administration also crunched the numbers.

The think tank says such a reversal would require immediate cuts of 21 percent, or $101 billion, in spending on programs unrelated to national security or veterans. The center chose education as an example and said a cut that size would trim more than $8 billion from K-12 funding, on top of cuts by state and local governments.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House Republican leadership, said the analysis is faulty. While the pledge calls for deep spending cuts, it doesn’t specify where they should be made, he said.

At a campaign event Tuesday night in Washington, Obama said the tuition tax credit “could be repealed if Republicans take over. They’ve already proposed to cut education spending by 20 percent.”

The American Opportunity Tax Credit, worth $2,500 a year, was included in the $814 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed into law last year. The tax credit is available for the 2009 and 2010 tax years, but is scheduled to expire at the end of this year because of how the law is written. Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to make the credit permanent.

So how does a law that is expiring in just over two months get repealed by a party that’s not in power?

The White House says it would be repealed if Republicans make good on a promise to end the stimulus.

Liz Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the stimulus program, said that if Republicans get their way they’d have to immediately freeze stimulus spending. Oxhorn said that if all stimulus spending were halted “today,” there would be no money to pay the tax credit next year when students and families who are now spending on tuition and other college costs would claim the credit on their 2010 income tax returns.

But it’s not that simple. Republicans don’t have enough votes now to freeze the stimulus; if they did, they could have ended the program already.

To end the stimulus, Republicans first must win control of the House and Senate on Nov. 2, then wait until a new Congress convenes in January before taking steps to fulfill any of the Pledge of America promises.

___

Online:

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: http://www.cbpp.org

Republican Pledge to America: http://pledge.gop.gov

FACT CHECK: Obama’s education claims missing facts (AP)

FACT CHECK: Obama’s education claims missing facts (AP)

The American Opportunity Tax Credit was included in the $814 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed last year. He had proposed making the tax credit permanent in his 2011 budget proposal, but Congress has not acted on his request.

Obama appeared in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday with three families who have taken advantage of the tax credit. Obama says the credit is worth $10,000 over four years and will help families invest in their children’s future.

A Treasury Department analysis says 12.5 million people used the credit last year, for an average of about $1,700.

Obama urges Congress to make college tax credit permanent

Obama urges Congress to make college tax credit permanent

BANGALORE (Reuters) – U.S. for-profit colleges, widely criticized for saddling students with big debts and not fully preparing them for the workplace, are kicking back as they garner public support.

Having seen their stock prices slump by a third since April as their business model has come under sustained attack from the Obama administration, education companies such as Apollo Group and Corinthian Colleges have begun a counterattack.

Corinthian has run a marketing campaign to raise awareness of the “unintended consequences” of the proposed rules, and has urged Washington to reconsider them.

Student unions, Republican senators and even some Democrats are lining up behind these schools in opposing the proposals that are seen crimping colleges’ growth and tightening enrollment policies.

The new rules would limit schools and the amount of help students could get, according to Dawn Connor, president of Students for Academic Choice, a student group that opposes the regulations.

“Default rates are up all over the place, that’s because the economy is down. I don’t think it should all be blamed on for-profit schools,” said Connor, who this week organized a student rally on Capitol Hill to protest the proposals.

The tough rules framed by the Department of Education could see fewer courses on offer and more students excluded from post-secondary education at a time when high unemployment and a slow recovery are bringing more people back to schools.

The department last week delayed releasing a final rule on the most controversial reform, citing the large number of critical comments, some 100,000, it had received.

The ‘gainful employment’ rule says the government would stop lending to college programs if more than 65 percent of ex-students fail to pay the principal on federal loans.

In August, the department released loan repayment rates of for-profit schools that showed most did not meet the required threshold to qualify for federal aid.

Morningstar analyst Todd Young said companies and industry groups were waiting to see the detail of the gainful employment proposals before firing back in earnest. These are now expected early next year.

“As the public comment period came to an end in September, the industry finally started its counterattack,” Young said.

Republicans also voiced their opposition to the proposed rules at a Senate hearing on Thursday.

“It’s naive to think these problems are limited to just the for-profit sector,” said Republican Sen. Michael Enzi, noting large debts owed by many law school graduates. “We’re just looking at this in a vacuum and that’s not fair.”

Democrats face the threat of losing control of one or both chambers of Congress in November mid-term elections amid voter anxiety over jobs and the slow pace of economic recovery.

The proposals could prompt 400,000 students out of post-secondary education each year, and trigger 90,000-100,000 job losses, according to a study by Parthenon Group — as schools will have to trim programs that don’t offer students solid job prospects.

“The government needs to think about access to education, how they can help students who want to get education but can’t afford loans and certainly can’t afford to get themselves into a lot of college-loan debt,” said Steve Loflin, executive director of The National Society of Collegiate Scholars, which provides scholarships to high-ranking students.

Some for-profit schools argue their default rates are high as they primarily serve some of society’s weaker elements.

“The biggest effect I see is the underserved population are going to be turned out again. I don’t think that’s a great result because those are the folks that are likely to need public assistance,” said Signal Hill analyst Trace Urdan.

STILL TAKING FLAK

But the schools are still coming under fire for charging high fees and running loose admission policies.

Rich Williams, higher education advocate at U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said for-profit colleges were still being irresponsible in their recruiting, and noted that they charge $15,000 for certification for programs like massage therapy — that costs about $520 at community colleges.

“If anything, these high-risk students should not be going to for-profit colleges,” said Williams, one of a 13-member team that helped the education department draft the new regulations.

Sara Fuller, a student at Apollo’s University of Phoenix, said she was never asked if she had a job or could repay loans before being enrolled on an associate degree in criminal justice.

“I called the university and was enrolled in classes on the same day,” said Fuller, who is pushing for tougher regulation as, even after investing over $12,000 in her degree, she’s not sure of getting a job.

(Reporting by A.Ananthalakshmi and Megha Mandavia; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)

Opposition to education rules gathers steam (Reuters)

Opposition to education rules gathers steam (Reuters)

SAN JUAN, Texas – When Ruth Garcia’s twins are born in two months, they’ll have all the rights of U.S. citizens. They and their six brothers and sisters will be able to vote, apply for federal student loans and even run for president.

Garcia is an illegal immigrant who crossed into the country about 14 years ago, and the citizenship granted to her children and millions others like them is at the center of a divisive national debate.

Republicans are pushing for congressional hearings to consider changing the nation’s 14th Amendment to deny such children the automatic citizenship the Constitution guarantees. They say women like Garcia are taking advantage of a constitutional amendment meant to guarantee the rights of freed slaves, and paint a picture of pregnant women rushing across the border to give birth.

A closer examination of the issue shows that the trend is not as dramatic as some immigration opponents have claimed.

Most illegal immigrants are born to parents like Garcia who have made the United States their home for years.

Out of 340,000 babies born to illegal immigrants in the United States in 2008, 85 percent of the parents had been in the country for more than a year, and more than half for at least five years, according to recent study from the Pew Hispanic Center.

And immigration experts say it’s extraordinarily rare for immigrants to come to the U.S. just so they can have babies and get citizenship. In most cases, they come to the U.S. for economic reasons and better hospitals, and end up staying and raising families.

Garcia crossed into the U.S. illegally about 14 years ago, before her children were born, and her husband has since been deported. She earns a living by selling tamales to other immigrants who live in fear of being deported from the slapdash, impoverished colonias that dot the Texas-Mexico border.

“I think that children aren’t at fault for having been born here,” Garcia said. “My children always have lived here. They’ve never gone to another country.”

Under current immigration law, Garcia and others like her don’t get U.S. citizenship even though their children are Americans.

With an estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, the issue strikes a chord with many voters — people like retired Air Force nurse and pediatric nurse practitioner Susan Struck, 66, of Double Adobe, Ariz.

“People come over … and they have babies with U.S. birth certificates, then they go back over the border with that Social Security number, with that birth certificate,” and have access to public services, she said at a recent event near the border organized by conservative tea party activists.

Several prominent Republican leaders share Struck’s beliefs on the issue. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina has been a vocal advocate for changing the Constitution, and he helped the issue gain momentum heading into the midterm elections.

“Women have traveled from across the world for the purpose of adding a U.S. passport holder to their family, as far away as China, Turkey and as close as Mexico,” said Jon Feere, legal analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict immigration laws.

Still, changing the Constitution is highly unlikely, legal scholars say. Measures have been introduced in each two-year congressional session since 2005, but none has made it out of committee. Constitutional changes require approval by two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress, an impossibility now because Democrats have the majority in both houses and most oppose such a measure. Even if that changes after November and legislation is passed, an amendment would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

To be sure, some pregnant Mexican women do come to the United States. In border cities like Nogales, women have been coming to the U.S. for decades to give birth, although the primary reason is better medical care, Santa Cruz County sheriff Tony Estrada said. Billboards advertising birthing services in Arizona line streets across the border in Nogales, Mexico.

Tucson Medical Center, 115 miles southeast of Phoenix, offers packages designed to provide inclusive care to new mothers. The program draws some residents of the northern Mexican state of Sonora who can afford its upfront costs and already have U.S. visas, spokesman Michael Letson said.

Princeton University demographer Douglas Massey said in 30 years studying Mexican immigration, he’s never interviewed a migrant who said they came to the United States just to get citizenship for their children.

“Mexicans do not come to have babies in the United States,” said Massey, who blames the tightening of the border in the 1990s for cutting off normal migration of men who used to come to work for a year or two and then go home. “They end up having babies in the United States because men can no longer circulate freely back and forth from homes in Mexico to jobs in the United States and husbands and wives quite understandably want to be together.”

More common, he and other experts says, are a families stuck with one child who is legal and others who aren’t — like Beatriz Gomez, a 35-year-old illegal immigrant who came to Phoenix 11 years ago on a now-expired tourist visa from Arriaga in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Her 12-year-old daughter was born in Mexico and is here illegally, but her two youngest children, ages 8 and 5, were born in the U.S. and are citizens.

“It’s sad,” Gomez said of her oldest daughter, who was only 1 when the family came to the United States. “She studies hard, and she won’t be able to go to a university like the other two.”

___

Associated Press Writers Amanda Lee Myers in Phoenix, Jonathan J. Cooper in Hereford, Ariz., and Paul J. Weber in San Juan contributed to this report.

‘Birth tourism’ a tiny portion of immigrant babies (AP)

‘Birth tourism’ a tiny portion of immigrant babies (AP)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Texas schools that cut bureaucratic costs by sharing services — from accounting to transportation — would get grants worth 10 percent of their savings under a plan Governor Rick Perry proposed on Tuesday.

Texas is expected to have to slash spending in its next two-year budget because its deficit is estimated at as high as $18 billion. The Republican governor said his proposal would increase how much money can be devoted to the classroom.

Furthermore, “These shared services create the economies of scale that benefit larger districts, while maintaining the individual attention available in smaller districts,” Parry said in a statement.

The governor, who narrowly leads his Democratic rival, Houston’s former mayor Bill White, in the polls, has decided to seek $830 million in federal education aid, according to local newspapers, including the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth.

That is how much Texas stood to receive from the $10 billion Congress enacted to help save 161,000 teaching jobs around the nation.

A Perry spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

Perry had at first spurned the funds because Texas was the only state that would be required to spend the same amount on its schools for three years in row. This obligation was crafted by a Texas Congressman who wanted to ensure the money would not be used for other purposes.

(Reporting by Joan Gralla; editing by Todd Eastham)

Texas governor offers school grants to spur sharing (Reuters)

Texas governor offers school grants to spur sharing (Reuters)

But as the school year begins, many educators are still waiting for the phone to ring.

“As far as I know, I’m not going to get my job back,” says Kirsten Jensen, 31, a sixth-grade teacher in Hillsborough, N.J. She was laid off last spring, one of about 3,900 pink-slipped New Jersey educators. “I haven’t heard anything,” she says, “but I’m not very hopeful at this point.”

Many school districts might not get the money in time to bring back teachers. Others, fearing even worse economic times over the next two years, are simply planning to put a large share of their money in the bank to ward off further cuts next spring.

“It looks to me like we’re not going to get any of this new money for the 2010-2011 school year,” says Joe Gertsema, the Yankton, S.D., schools superintendent, who’s trying to patch a $1.5 million deficit. He tapped cash reserves to keep teachers on the job this fall but says his tiny district “will have to make some tough decisions” if the money doesn’t come through next year.

The cash is “a welcome relief at a time when state budgets are being cut,” says Gene Wilhoit of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents state superintendents. But he and others say the timing of the aid — states face a Sept. 9 deadline to apply for their share — makes it unclear whether they’ll get money in time to save many jobs this fall.

And rehiring thousands of teachers may, in fact, produce its own set of problems, says Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy. “It’s a real dilemma, because if you bring somebody back, you may have to lay them off again next year.”

But National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel says Congress wanted districts to use the money to save jobs now, “not as a savings account for next year.”

Districts have spent the past few years trimming payrolls, trying to limit the number of classroom teachers they let go.

In Cupertino, Calif., superintendent Phil Quon says a week-long furlough and “massive” local fundraising staved off layoffs, saving 107 teaching jobs. So any cash he sees from Congress will keep people on the payroll next fall. “There are no more ‘edges’ to our budget,” he says.

Jensen, the New Jersey sixth-grade teacher, worked nine years before getting pink-slipped in May. “It was pretty devastating,” she says. “I never in a million years expected it to happen.”

She has been watching job postings but can’t imagine doing anything but teaching. “I have no idea what else I would do. I’m used to being around children every September.”

See you in September? For teachers, maybe, maybe not

See you in September? For teachers, maybe, maybe not

When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on Tuesday the latest states to win the Race to the Top competition — and a share of $3.4 billion in federal financing — he said they were chosen because they outlined the boldest plans for shaking up their public school systems.

Eastern States Dominate in Winning School Grants

Two years ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, testified before Congress about the city’s impressive progress in closing the gulf in performance between minority and white children. The gains were historic, all but unheard of in recent decades.

Triumph on Racial Gap Withers in New York Schools

It was part of the math major’s routine last quarter at the University of California, Los Angeles: Stand in line at the reserve desk in the library’s closing hours with the goal of borrowing a copy for the weekend.

The alternative was to buy a $120 book and sell it back for far less. If she could sell it back at all.

“It’s like this terrible game of catch your books when you can,” said Wolfe, a new graduate who estimates she saved $800 a year using books on reserve and who now shares textbook tips as a counselor to incoming UCLA students. “It’s frustrating when you’re already stressed about school. Being stressed about textbooks doesn’t seem right.”

Maybe, just maybe, relief is on the way.

A new federal law requires publishers to provide textbook price information to professors and calls on colleges to identify course textbooks during registration, giving students more time to shop around. Experts call it a step in the right direction, but not a game-changer.

At the same time, a robust online marketplace of used books and recent inroads by textbook rental programs give students more options than ever. The prospect of digital books and slow-but-steady growth in free online “open” content loom as developments that could upend the textbook landscape and alleviate the perennial problem of rising prices.

“Change is coming, but it’s not going to happen immediately,” said David Lewis, dean of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis University Library and assistant vice president for digital scholarly communications at Indiana University. “If you’re in junior high school, you can be sure it’ll be better. If you’re in high school, there’s a shot. If you’re starting college as a freshman, you might see it as a senior. It’s on more and more people’s agenda.”

According to a 2005 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, college textbook prices increased at twice the rate of inflation over the previous two decades, though not as dramatically as tuition.

More recent data from the National Association of College Stores show textbooks costs climbed 14% from the 2006-2007 academic year to 2008-2009. A 2010 survey by the group found students spent an average of $667 per year on required course materials including textbooks, although other studies have put the figure at about $900.

In 2008, Congress responded by including textbook-affordability provisions in the Higher Education Opportunity Act.

Along with the price-disclosure clause meant to push professors toward cheaper options, it requires publishers to offer textbooks separately from extra items like workbooks and CDs. The practice of “bundling” products leads to markups of 10 to 50% and makes books harder to sell, according to the Student Public Interest Research Groups, which pressed for the reforms.

“We have more lower cost options than ever before, and professors are going to have more information than ever before,” said Nicole Allen, textbook advocate for the student PIRGs.

Like the music and media businesses, the textbook industry has been revolutionized by the Internet. Although used books have long been an option for students, the Web opened up a world of bargain-hunting beyond the campus bookstore.

These days, sites such as BIGWORDS and BestBookBuys let students search several online stores at once. The 13th edition of the seminal textbook “Marketing Management,” which lists for $190 new, can be had for as little as $19.99 used.

More recently, textbook rental sites such as Chegg, BookRenter and CollegeBookRenter have arrived, offering rentals at roughly half the cost of buying. Their business model —Netflix goes to college — has prompted college bookstores and publishers to play catch up and offer rentals themselves.

Textbook publisher Cengage Learning began renting directly to students last spring and has expanded its online rental inventory to 3,000 titles. Campus bookstore operator Follett will introduce rentals at more than 800 bookstores this fall, and Barnes & Noble will do the same on more than 300 campuses.

Earlier this summer, BookRenter, which has contracts with Amazon.com and other online booksellers to fill orders, announced that more than 75 campus bookstores would use its platform to rent textbooks.

Chegg keeps its own inventory of nearly 5 million books at a warehouse outside Louisville The start-up aspires to forge direct relationships with students, shipping products in their own packaging, offering a liberal return policy and promising to plant a tree for every order, said CEO Dan Rosensweig, a former Yahoo executive.

Behind the scenes, publishers get a share of the rental revenue — something they can’t say about used book sales.

Open access textbooks pose a bolder challenge to the status quo. The start-up Flat World Knowledge contracts with authors to write new textbooks and publishes them for free under an open content license, allowing professors to edit the raw material and add their own contributions while giving students access to a Web-based HTML book.

Last fall, about 480 professors adopted one of the company’s initial 10 business and economics titles, said co-founder Eric Frank. About 1,200 professors are expected to use 22 titles to teach 95,000 students this fall.

The company is betting students will pay a reasonable price for greater convenience. Flat World’s revenue comes from selling everything from $30 black-and-white copies of its books to $3 audio chapters, as well as study aids like digital flash cards. About 55% of students are buying something at this point, Frank said.

So far, the main drawback to open access is the dearth of titles, said Albert Greco, a professor at Fordham University‘s Graduate School of Business Administration and an authority on the textbook publishing industry.

Greco and others forecast a major shift in the next five years to digital textbooks, which already cost about half as much as new print editions on CourseMart.com, a kind of textbook iTunes launched in 2007 by the major textbook publishers.

That would doom the used book and print rental marketplace, Greco said. As for immediate relief from the new price disclosure law, Greco said it won’t do any good for students unlucky enough to have four courses with brand-new books.

“Whether it will help students comes down to, ‘It depends,’” he said.

Sophie Stanish, a junior at Fordham University in New York, fumes about paying $200 for a new math textbook she couldn’t sell back and a $10 short-story collection that fetched 75 cents at trade-in.

She likes the concept of Fordham’s “E-RES” program — short for “electronic reserve” — in which professors scan sections of textbooks to the extent allowed by copyright law and then put the material online for free.

But, she said, “I can’t read off a screen and retain the knowledge as well. It’s a personal thing. I like to highlight.”

Other colleges seeking to provide relief have adopted textbook loan programs. At City College of San Francisco, Kathy Gill said she misses class to line up early for a popular loan program for students on financial aid.

The limit is two loaned books, so the business major still shops online for used and rental options each semester.

“You do get a little bit of a break,” Gill said. “Every little thing helps.”

New law, e-books and rentals may make college textbooks less costly

New law, e-books and rentals may make college textbooks less costly