Textbook Advertising

Yet another ad placement vehicle -- this time it's college textbooks. According to a story in the Star Ledger, Freeload Press will:

"offer more then 100 titles this fall -- mostly for business courses -- completely for free. Students who fill out a five minute survey, can download a pdf of the book, which they can store on their hard drive and print."

Have to admit some mixed feelings here. On one hand, it's yet another of advertising continuing to be placed everywhere just because it can be done. First of all, if Ford sponsors my textbooks, with that really help to create a better relationship with Ford? And what happens if you fail that class??? Could Ford expect future liability because their text book didn't teach me enough? And will a business book sponsored by Ford feel the need to not be as hard on Ford as they might have been? Or perhaps they'll always use GM for examples of bad business.

If on the other hand, textbooks are a financial hardship for students, then couldn't this be a welcome offer of help? Would this be seen as being a good member of society by helping more students afford the necessary learning tools for college?

Maybe it'd be better to create textbook scholarship programs, so that students in need to take advantage of the offer of help, without there being any question about the integrity of the textbooks themselves.

But man, we sure love to put advertising everywhere, don't we!