Image Credit: ESEMES, United States Government, via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
When Science Outside started, we made a big decision to adopt a per teacher/per district pricing model. This means that when a teacher purchases a product, they can use that product with all of the students they teach in perpetuity. When a product is purchased, the teacher can use it for all of their students for all time. This makes the cost far less than the traditional and much more commonly used per student pricing model.
We are teachers, we know how tight money is, and we know that science budgets at most schools are far too small.
Businesses need to evolve to meet the needs of educators in a digital era. Teachers can either photocopy or share our products digitally at no cost from their personal pocket or the science department budget.
Let’s look at an example: Twenty years ago, I purchased a paper Environmental Science Lab Manual at a cost of $39 per student in my class. For a typical class of 25 environmental science students a year, it cost $975. Students wrote in the manuals and at the end of the year they were recycled. That is what I would have to pay for every class for every year. Let’s take a look at what that lab manual would cost if we taught 100 students per year for 5 years and purchased a lab manual for each student.
100 students/year x 5 years x $39 per copy of the lab manual = $19,500/year
That’s a price many school districts just won’t pay. Especially in addition to the textbooks they have to purchase. Because of limited school budgets, per student pricing puts intense pressure on teachers to spend hours photocopying copyrighted work (illegally) just so they can better educate their students. Legal Disclaimer: Science Outside does not endorse this behavior.
In contrast, a $249 lab manual purchased today and instantly delivered as a zip file can be used to teach all 100 of my students for many years to come. You can legally distribute digitally or print out paper copies for all of your students. You won’t have to hold a book open trying to copy pages individually while inhaling ozone and being bombarded by UV radiation. Each activity is an individual file so it is easily customizable. Let’s take a look at a 5 year cost analysis:
$249 lab manual cost
----------------------------------------- = <$0.50/student
100 students/year x 5 years
That’s less than 50 cents per student. And the total cost for teaching 500 students is still $249.
$39/student vs. $0.50/student
$19,500 - $249 = $19,251
$19,251
That’s the difference between the per student pricing and per teacher pricing models for a typical resource for a typical classroom teacher.
School districts should allocate more of their budget to science supplies and other educational materials. Educational resource providers should also keep prices as low as possible. We can’t control what school districts or educational providers do, but we can do our part by setting a better example.
The initial purchase price of a lab manual or case study may look high, but a quick analysis shows it costs far less than what the big publishing companies have been charging us for decades. We hope that they follow our lead in reducing the costs of providing premiere educational resources at affordable prices for teachers and students everywhere.
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