Universities Taking Kindly To Kindle

Kindle is getting a solid grade when it comes to academic use. The Amazon-run electronic book reading device has been picked up by Princeton University for use in the fall, according to Inside Higher Ed. The school will give students the option of buying several hundred textbooks in a Kindle edition rather than having to shell out for the heavy hardback.

Yale, Oxford, and the University of California schools are also testing Kindle for class uses. The UC system already has about 40 percent of its texts available for download. Princeton, though, will be the first school to offer a textbook on Kindle before the hard copy is even out: The university will offer a new economics book electronically two weeks prior to the regular edition’s release.

Surprisingly, though, the Kindle editions don’t come much cheaper than the always expensive standard college texts. Most of the electronic offerings run just a few bucks less than their printed counterparts — and, of course, the Kindle itself costs $359, so it’ll take a lot of downloads to pay off financially.