Colleges May Start Forcing Switch To eTextbooks 419
An anonymous reader writes "Here's the new approach under consideration by college leaders and textbook manufacturers: 'Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).' That may be 'the best way to control skyrocketing costs and may actually save the textbook industry from digital piracy,' proponents claim."
Students will complain (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently, students at most universities aren't required to buy textbooks. They can borrow them at the library (frequently on reserve) and save money (at the cost of time and convenience). I can't see this working without some opt-out mechanism at the very least.
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Informative)
They can borrow them at the library (frequently on reserve) and save money
In ye olden days, when we could get 5 cent per page photocopies, the university bookstore never seemed to sell any any books that cost much more than 5 cents per page, if you know what I mean.
The response of the professors/TAs/instructors was highly variable.
The publishing industry solution was wait for photocopy prices to raise to like ten cents or whatever it is now, and also bulk the heck out of the books like a walmart customer on HFCS. So, a 600 page calculus tome is going to cost me $60 to photocopy or $80 new... may as well buy it.
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Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely serious when I say this, my college Fraternity used pledges to do just that (probably still do).
All the guys taking a given class would throw in a few bucks for one copy of the text, then as if by magic we would receive an electronic version.
Terrible copyright infringement, pyramid scheming, slavery, hazing, and all that. But it was so convenient.
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Funny)
Absolutely serious when I say this, my college Fraternity used pledges to do just that (probably still do).
All the guys taking a given class would throw in a few bucks for one copy of the text, then as if by magic we would receive an electronic version.
Terrible copyright infringement, pyramid scheming, slavery, hazing, and all that. But it was so convenient.
You mean righteous distribution of knowledge?
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Insightful)
Something ye forgot:
YOU CAN'T RESELL E-TEXTS. When I was in college I used to buy books for about $50 used, get my work out of it, and then sell it for $40 at the end of semester. NET COST: $10.
Now this e-text idea will prevent us from doing that. It will end-up costing MORE not less.
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Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Informative)
Only recently has this monopoly been broken with the advent of online textbook purchasing, and prices are a bit more reasonable on the new prices. They still rape you on the used purchase/sell-back end but that can be circumvented if you keep an ear out and find people who just had the class and you're about to take it. Cut out the middle-man and both sides are happy. Higher learning has become such a racket driven by lust for profit.
Recently taking more classes we used e-book versions which I say was even more of a rip-off. The e-book cost about 40-60% of the dead-tree version, and they revoke access after about six months to a year, and of course you can't sell it back at all. Maybe I am weird but I prefer to keep my textbooks as reference and refreshers.
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Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Students will complain (Score:4, Funny)
it don't get easier than that!
Will it automatically compile them into a single .pdf file and publish them via torrent?
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Solution: Don't sell your book back for 20% to the bookstore. Sell it either directly to another student for 50% or sell it elsewhere. Back when I was in college there was a street vendor who would buy back used books, but his prices were even worse than the bookstore. If I recall correctly, the university bookstore was pretty good, at least much better than 20%.
There are so many ways to hook up buyers and sellers in today's connected world that you're really failing if you can't find an alternative with a
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I don't know of any university where you could do that because professors always want you to have the latest edition; which the library never has or if they do, just one copy - yeah, share that with 40 classmates. They then assign reading and problems out of that particular edition.
Which is completely asinine - especially for undergraduate courses. I mean really, when was the time there was a break through in accounting, basic physics, chemistry, computer science, psycholog
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Buy the old edition for $10 and photocopy just the problems (probably ~50 pages, or ~100 at most). The material is the same old schlock anyway and you don't need the current version unless maybe you're a true "template learner" (read: moron).
The professors should be doubly ashamed; they're milking their students and usually getting jackshit in royalties. Exploiting people for someone else for nearly free is the lowest of the low.
Then again, once i tried giving the equivalent problems for each edition of the
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Interesting)
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I am currently using Rudins' intro to real analysis paper back for my three quarter real analysis course. This book hasn't seen a revision since 1963, it is a MONSTER! This is a book that hates you and hates visual intuition. It also only cost me seven dollars new. Yes, the material hasn't changed and yes the book is the definitive Real Analysis intro book, but I'd be cautious of books that haven't been revised in 50+ years.... That means they're comprehensive, and most likely very DIFFICULT!
Fun course thou
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For anything in computer science which changes fast it generally changes fast enough that by the time a books has been written,published and distributed it's already out of date.
For the vast majority of material it changes so slowly it doesn't matter.
I was lucky enough to go to a major university where the professors weren't as corrupt as fuck and didn't have any arrangements with their friends to require each others books and this was pretty much exactly the view a number of them espoused.
Poor typesetting?
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This will also kill the used book market.
Re:Students will complain (Score:5, Insightful)
This will also kill the used book market.
That's the idea.
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That's a good enough reason for us to stop this before it becomes reality.
Another good reason are students who share books. This is not at all uncommon if you have a roommate with some of the same courses, but at different hours.
This will effectively kill this saving too.
The library argument isn't too persuasive, though, because the libraries should still have the paper version.
But all in all, this will hit the poorer students the hardest.
Student book library (Score:2)
For a time I ran the ACM chapter at San Francisco State. We collected used textbooks from students and kept them in a library in the CS lab, and would lend them out to members as needed.
With an e-book system, that type of system probably wouldn't be possible.
Just a way to kill the used book market... (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony of this proposal is that many professors, realizing that book prices are just obscene in the academic market, are preparing their own materials and giving them to the students for the cost of printing them.
This is clearly just an attempt by the textbook marketers to kill the secondhand book sellers.
As my wife says, "calculus has not changed much in the last 6 years, but my textbook has gone through 3 revisions in that time!"
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The irony of this proposal is that many professors, realizing that book prices are just obscene in the academic market, are preparing their own materials and giving them to the students for the cost of printing them.
Up here in Canada, there are strict regulations on such photocopying. Professors order a course pack from a copy shop made up of hand-picked chapters from various books, which the students can then pick up, but because of the per-page photocopying license fees [accesscopyright.ca], these often end up costing the student about as much as the original textbook.
- RG>
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The irony of this proposal is that many professors, realizing that book prices are just obscene in the academic market, are preparing their own materials and giving them to the students for the cost of printing them.
20 years ago I had a EE-type professor whom gave us photocopies of about 2 to 3 pages out of perhaps a hundred books in the field. Yes several hundred pages of photocopies per semester. In his opinion it was within his fair rights use to copy small snippets out of each book for purely educational purposes. We also spent a lot of time doing educational / editorial compare -n- contrast the treatment of class AB amplifier second order harmonic analysis in this book vs that book, etc etc. He also delighted
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As my wife says, "calculus has not changed much in the last 6 years, but my textbook has gone through 3 revisions in that time!"
I don't think basic calculus has changed in a few centuries.
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I don't think basic calculus has changed in a few centuries.
Are you sure the way we teach calculus hasn't changed at all in that time?
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I don't think basic calculus has changed in a few centuries.
Are you sure the way we teach calculus hasn't changed at all in that time?
Maybe - it's gotten worse. I didn't truly understand it until I had physics. Math texts are garbage. Except for maybe the IEEE's Calculus Tutorial. That had applications and you actually learned what the hell Calculus was invented for in the first place.
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Are you sure the way we teach calculus hasn't changed at all in that time?
The way we teach calculus has not changed so much that you would need every second year a new revision of a calculus book.
If a new revision is needed every second year, then there has been something wrong with the text book in the first place or there is something wrong with the publisher or both options apply (and somehow I think the latter is the case).
Math notation has significantly changed (Score:2)
As my wife says, "calculus has not changed much in the last 6 years, but my textbook has gone through 3 revisions in that time!"
I don't think basic calculus has changed in a few centuries.
Try reading the translated Principia Mathematica. (I won't ask you to go read the Latin)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pm-notation/ [stanford.edu]
The math itself hasn't changed. The way we write it has. It's like Shakespearian English vs. Modern English with all the variants in between.
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In acentury... sure. A few centuries? Nope. q.v. Cauchy's wrong theorem [google.com]. Basically two centuries ago, analysis was a mess and it took a lot of hard work from Cauchy, Fourier, Weierstrass, Dedekind and many others to clean things up and get to a solid foundation with the characterisation of the reals as the unique ordered field and the epsilon-delta definition of continuity.
Is that something that is taught in an undergraduate Calculus sequence? You know Calc 1-3? Nope.
An undergraduate Calculus sequence can be taught quite well with a Dover classic for $20 and it'd probably be superior at that to today's overpriced crap that does nothing but put extra money in the pocket of some academic.
Re:Just a way to kill the used book market... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly right. Somehow the fine article proposes "saving the textbook industry" as something we'd actually want to do. The textbook industry adds no value to your education. All value comes from the university. The best thing for everyone, student, professor, parent, or administrator is for the textbook industry to die and be replaced by online, collaborative, peer reviewed textbooks. The textbook publishing industry adds no value, and is nothing but a parasite on the education industry.
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That being said, I'm all for instructors having to actually develop the material for their courses. The problem is that they can claim they don't have time to develop their courses alone because they're teaching so many students because enrollment is up and
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As my wife says, "calculus has not changed much in the last 6 years, but my textbook has gone through 3 revisions in that time!"
I'd wager that any calculus being taught at the undergrad level hasn't changed in the past 50 years, much less 6...
Re:Just a way to kill the used book market... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure it has. Undergrad calculus has gotten a lot simpler in the past 50 years.
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In what way? Not being flippant, I'm genuinely unsure as to what about calculus has changed in the last 50 years.
I'm betting my books from 20 years ago still have the exact same stuff in it -- hell, I bet they're still using an edition of Stewart in some places.
Re:Just a way to kill the used book market... (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way? Not being flippant, I'm genuinely unsure as to what about calculus has changed in the last 50 years.
I believe the GP was arguing that it's not calculus itself that has gotten easier, but rather the presentation, rigor, etc. in the way it is taught.
Aside from the use of calculators, mathematical software and such, which is not insignificant, calculus itself is not easier.
I learned calculus (not too long ago actually) from Tom Apostol's text, which pulls no punches in terms of mathematical rigor and formalism. Not proofs for the sake of proofs, mind you, but formalism that demonstrates the power of calculus and helps you to understand how it works.
The reason I was taught that way was because I chose to take a calculus sequence intended for math majors, though. At my institution, fifty years ago, everyone learned from a book like Apostol (perhaps another text, dumbed down slightly).
Today, textbooks are often about case study problems, using your graphing calculator, etc. I'm not arguing that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it has shifted the focus away from rigorous formalism (which most students have more trouble with) and to types of problems and methods of solution that are, on the whole, easier and simpler. The overall content is still there, but the presentation and methodology is, I think, more user-friendly to many students.
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The irony of this proposal is that many professors, realizing that book prices are just obscene in the academic market, are preparing their own materials and giving them to the students for the cost of printing them.
Wait, where did you go to school?
My professors WROTE many of the texts they used, or the would use the texts of their department buddies, who in turn would use their texts.
Professors are often the authors, especially in the stable social sciences and arts, and business areas, where not much new happens quickly.
Etexts are often tied to some form of DRM, which prevents duplication, but also kills off Used Book markets.
For the most part, the publishers have contrived to prevent used Ebooks from being sold, or
and it will cut out the used materials vendors. (Score:2)
Which is nice. Don't let anyone resell their materials from a prior year. The textbook companies will be thrilled!
I'm guessing it's not about cost control, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Optimally you won't mind that, everything could end up much cheaper and much more convenient. At my highschool we had sort of similar scheme (though with analogue books obviously) - pay yearly what was at most 1/6th (probably less) the cost of full new set, get all needed books from the library, during the first week / first lesson of each subject (and of course return them at the year end; it was still a better deal than own set & resales). Sure, most of those books was around one decade old, but also
Bulk buying (Score:2)
Might offer a bit more bulk-buying pricing power, but not sure if I like the eBook aspect.
Granted, this seems analogous to requiring new purchases.
I expect the following: (Score:5, Insightful)
Book prices will still remain close to $100.
You'll lose your right to resell your old books.
Accessibility for us disabled folks will be an artificial extra cost, to satisfy the imaginary property brigade who think text-to-speech isn't a right.
Re:I expect the following: (Score:5, Insightful)
A bigger issue is that you lose the right to retain your textbooks. Given rapid edition changes, the right to resell was often of limited value and theoretical anyway; OTOH, most of the people I know kept many of their textbooks and occasionally reference them even a decade or more after leaving school; during high school, one of the ways I learned things outside of school was from my fathers old college texts.
See 17 USC 121 (Score:5, Informative)
Accessibility for us disabled folks will be an artificial extra cost, to satisfy the imaginary property brigade who think text-to-speech isn't a right.
It is a right. Even U.S. imaginary property law [copyright.gov] appears to preserve this right.
Buying used books (Score:2)
Victom of eTextbook (Score:4, Funny)
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Anybody who claims to be going to college and can't spell it is a moron.
That would be you.
Re:Victom of eTextbook (Score:5, Funny)
and can't spell it is a moron
No, you mean a moran.
Re:Victom of eTextbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Once is a typo. Twice is not knowing how to spell the word.
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I wasn't really incensed about textbooks until the bookstore tried to sell our class what looked like a marginally-more-professional version of "photocopy the whole book" (cheap paper - including the cover, pages rotated 90 degrees, that stupid plastic binding) for $90 when you can get the hardcover for $45 on Amazon [amazon.com].
I mean, come on.
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So are you. Collage is a kind of art. And whatever school you're attending, you should get your money back, and go back to fourth grade, your spelling and grammar is atrocious.
A more reasonable proposition (Score:4, Interesting)
Universities collaborate to produce textbooks (pay the author, an editor, possibly some layout/graphics staff) and then release the finished textbooks under a Creative Commons license (by-sa-nc for example).
You know, to provide better service and education for their students and society as a whole.
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BINGO
This is one of the biggest reasons I use CC and recommend it to EVERYONE I can.
I also want to get politics out of textbooks and going to a wiki style system of creating "texts" that can be used broadly. The Political Correctness that has infected our educational system is horrible, and it has made it impossibly difficult to write a text books that all the various "interest groups" can agree on is nearly impossible.
Which means our whole system is doomed, right??
Textbooks are a total scam (Score:5, Insightful)
By the time I was in grad school at GaTech, undergraduate courses were spinning revs every quarter, and the only thing that would change would be the problems. This eliminated the book buy-back market almost entirely, because profs of course would require problems from the book.
Undergrad level calc has not changed in the last 20 years. There's no reason someone shouldn't be able to use a calc book handed down from a parent or older sibling. Yet, term after term, every student is nearly compelled to spend $140 on a new book.
It's no wonder our educational system from cradle to PhD is a complete failure. Institutions are too focused on productizing and profiteering rather than growing the world's best talent.
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In terms of what they teach in most forms of undregrad ... is it only 20 years? I got the impression when I took calculus that it might have been way longer than 20 years.
Now, some books might have gotten better at teaching it, so that's a factor. But, generally speaking, I'd say undergraduate calculus must be pretty stable by now.
Sadly, fundin
Re:Textbooks are a total scam (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason they do this, is to get around academic fraud/cheating.
Which is why textbooks shouldn't have any "work" problems, they should be created and handed out by the Professor/Teacher, as handouts. Perhaps even have several sets that are handed out and updated each semester by the publisher. Texts remain the same, but there is a complimentary handout/workbook that contains all the problems.
That would be too easy.
Re:Textbooks are a total scam (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we stop caring if students just copy the right answer from somewhere on their homework? It's a participation grade anyway - the goal of homework isn't for the student to take some questions home and return one day with the answer (that's what grad school is for), the goal is for the student to spend some time thinking about the problems and trying to work them out; ideally successfully but the important part is the thinking and working, not having a correct answer. If the student really wants to know what the solutions are and how to work them out, they'll come in to discussion section or office hours (or lecture!).
And if the student is the sort of person who just copies the right answers from somewhere, then he's fucked for the quizzes, midterms and finals anyway.
Basically, we care waaaay too much about whether or not people have correct answers on homework. It's like grading a weight training class on how far up people can lift their weights, and then complaining that some people use a crane - that's your own damn fault for losing sight of the fact that the metric is not the goal in and of itself. Those people will fail during the final anyway (when you have to wrestle a grizzly bear).
Why are costs skyrocketing? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I don't know about paper, but I'd guess that shipping prices are highly correlated to the price of diesel. And, as you can see here [eia.gov], it's about triple what it was 10 years ago. That cost isn't just factored in to getting the book from the distributor to the store where you buy it, but in every step of the manufacturing process where something has to be moved from one place to another. And it's not like business to just eat those costs, so they pass them on to you.
Now imagine if the entire process of maki
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Yes, the cost of printing books (which isn't just the cost of paper) has been going up faster than the general rate of inflation for quite some time.
Save the textbook industry? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that why the prices are gargantuan compared to other books?
You know what the difference usually is between the fourth and fifth edition of a textbook is? A little bit of reformatting, and a couple extra anecdotes. Yet the professors are told that they need to use the new material and they force it down on the students so that someone who wrote a book 5 years ago gets some income for the next 10 years, or maybe its the publishers, I don't know.
Point is - they set up the used book stores in colleges for a reason, so you could re-use text books. In some fields this has worked well, but in other fields, authors have just started to rehash their books to make money.
In all honesty - education material should not be privatized, their shouldn't be an issue with digital piracy because it should all be made publicly available. Wanting to LEARN shouldn't come with a cost. When I pay money to a college or university its for the professor's time, who is an expert in the field and can answer any questions the textbooks can't. It also covers the upkeep of the infrastructure. The only cost incurred with a textbook should be the ones manufacturing the book.
Education as a money making industry sickens me a little.
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You know what the difference usually is between the fourth and fifth edition of a textbook is? A little bit of reformatting, and a couple extra anecdotes. Yet the professors are told that they need to use the new material and they force it down on the students so that someone who wrote a book 5 years ago gets some income for the next 10 years, or maybe its the publishers, I don't know.
Back when I went to school, the teachers started by handing out errata sheets we could insert into our books if we bought an
Re:Save the textbook industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet the professors are told that they need to use the new material and they force it down on the students ...
I'm not interested in forcing a new textbook on my students, and I'm quite happy to allow them to use an older edition. The problem is that those older editions become harder and harder to find as time passes. After a semester or two it doesn't matter if I force the students to use the newest edition, because only the newest edition is available.
As many others have suggested, profs could be providing their own reading as pdfs. Which I plan to do, eventually, when I have the time. But since this kind of activity isn't recognized as scholarly work unless it actually gets published by an actual publishing company, I can't afford the time, at least until I get tenure.
Bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
We are not paying all that money just for the textbook material, we are paying for the knowledge of the professors, and the shared experience with other people. Putting additional restrictions on the materials themselves for profit goes against the entire ethos of open information sharing, which is the cornerstone of university research.
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- When the batteries are dead and the local bookstore is closed, paper books can still be read.
- You don't have to wait for the publisher to remove the bugs in your textbooks, you can just use Raid.
- If you spill bear on your book you can let it dry out and it will still be readable.
- Ten or twenty years from now your ebooks will be unreadable, but you'll still be able to pull an old textbook off the shelf to look something up.
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- If you spill bear on your book you can let it dry out and it will still be readable.
At that point I'd be more worried about being mauled by the bear!
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- If you spill bear on your book you can let it dry out and it will still be readable.
I think that only happens in taxidermy classes.
My experience with e-textbooks (Score:5, Informative)
I attend an online university for my masters program. As part of this program, because it is new, they offered a pilot whereby students enrolled from the outset would receive free e-books. Being that I am poor (single income, one child and a SAHM) I welcomed this offer.
The software used is miserable to operate (slow, buggy, required me to sit on with their tech support for over an hour to resolve an upgrade issue). It takes upwards of 15 minute to print a single chapter because it adds text with your name and e-mail address assigned to the account (for DRM ) to every page.
While I am grateful for the free books, if I had the choice between the two I'd definitely go hardcover. The student should be able to make the choice between the two mediums, not the school regardless of whatever their motivation is.
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It takes upwards of 15 minute to print a single chapter because it adds text with your name and e-mail address assigned to the account (for DRM ) to every page.
Wow. I wonder if they have any idea how easy it is to dump postscript output to a file, run it through sed, and produce a clean document.
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It takes upwards of 15 minute to print a single chapter
Kind of misses the point of an ebook, making it more of a publish yourself at home. The other issue, is unless you get ink and paper for free (aka printing it at work) a hardcover will probably be cheaper.
DRM ebooks I can't loan out or sell back, awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
Or perhaps maybe give out a grant to write a textbook. Open textbooks for freshmen level classes should be possible, and is being worked on. It's ridiculous making freshmen pay $200 for a physics textbook, that IMHO is worse than the one I paid $80 for 10 years ago.
There are about 400 students in the 100 level physics classes at my school. That's $80,000 for just 1 year of books, in one subject, only freshmen level, at one university.
So obviously it's millions per year per subject nationwide. Don't you think for a couple million we could get someone to write a free textbook, and then we can save millions year after year.
It's almost as insane as paying so much for journal subscriptions, instead of switching to open publications.
Free/open textbooks (Score:4, Informative)
Open textbooks for freshmen level classes should be possible
There are free/open textbooks in mathematics, at least at the fresher level. Here are a few:
http://www.lightandmatter.com/calc/calc.pdf [lightandmatter.com] some physics books are at the same site
ftp://joshua.smcvt.edu/pub/hefferon/book/book.pdf [smcvt.edu]
http://www.math.uiowa.edu/~stroyan/InfsmlCalculus/FoundInfsmlCalc.pdf [uiowa.edu]
http://www.mecmath.net/calc3book.pdf [mecmath.net]
http://www.opensourcemath.org/books/mauch-applied_math/applied_math.pdf [opensourcemath.org]
LaTeX source is available for some of them. These books mostly bridge from high school calculus to first year college vector calculus (the last one goes a bit further), but may not be aligned with a particular professor's path through the topics. There are various others at high school level, and quite a few in specialized/advanced areas, but not so many at the undergrad level. It's worth browsing through the categories at http://planetmath.org/?op=mscbrowse&from=books [planetmath.org] for slightly more advanced topics.
eBooks vs. Used Books (Score:5, Insightful)
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Clearly you haven't been to college in a while. The resale value of textbooks is next-to-nil. Bookstores will routinely buy back books at a quarter of the price you paid for them (if you were fortunate enough to be able to buy the used version), and then resell them at their original price. I understand a "brokerage fee", but what college bookstores do is pretty exorbitant.
And a new edition screws over folks on both sides of the split: people have to buy new books as used ones aren't available, but at the s
Re:eBooks vs. Used Books (Score:4, Interesting)
BookMaid (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bookmaid.com/ [bookmaid.com] is set up to do exactly that for RIT students. Thing is, it often doesn't have anyone who's listed the book you need. Good idea though.
Renting, not buying (Score:3, Insightful)
No way is anyone going to be *buying* any books. You'll be renting it.
some professors get kickbacks from book sales (Score:2)
some professors get kickbacks from book sales and they seem to be ones who are the ones who like to find ways to force you to buy them for that class.
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What do you base this on?
My quantum mechanics professor writes the textbook for his class (and probably what amounts to many others at other universities). His cut of the $100-$150 (depending on source) book is $5 (which he graciously offered to refund us if we weren't happy with it).
And that's not kickbacks, that's royalties. Now, I'm operating under the assumption this theoretical kickback per copy is less than the royalties. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise. At a theoretical maximum per copy of $5 pe
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You must be from a more civilized country. Around here the breakdown is about 90% know its a scam, 5% are the Kool Aid drinkers whom think they'll retire rich and haven't figured out the hollywood accounting scams that mean they'll never actually get a penny, and 5% wish they could be Kool Aid drinkers but are too new to have even been asked to write the book.
Colleges are such masters of cost control (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I think this is in part that the colleges are upset that the money that goes to textbooks doesn't go to them. They obviously don't care about how much the cost goes up, just look at tuition. What the college administrators care about is that the parents and students see this steady increase. If they can move this into a fee that is paid right along with tuition, they can hide this cost and get rid of one of the sources of complaint.
A "Rental" system might be a good model. (Score:2, Insightful)
Right to Read (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
That crazy kooky Stallman. What nonsense fearmongering will he rant about next?
...and for those of us who don't buy books? (Score:4, Informative)
And before replies start pouring in about how I'm cheating myself and my grades will suffer...you're wrong. I'm consistently making 'A's in my classes, book or no book.
Free the textbooks (Score:2, Informative)
Or of course, they could just use free (as in freedom and price) CC licensed textbooks. I wrote two such undergraduate textbooks:
http://www.jirka.org/ra/ [jirka.org]
http://www.jirka.org/diffyqs/ [jirka.org]
That should save some money. Both are classes where a traditional textbook is $100 or so
At OSU (Score:4, Informative)
Professors here at Ohio State have a variety of ways to deal with secondhand book sales. Some textbooks here are only available in looseleaf form so they cannot be sold back. Many are "OSU Edition" copies, to ensure they cannot be sold online; to book stores in other regions; or at all after 1--2 years once the publisher comes out with the next edition. Barns & Noble, the "official" OSU bookstore [bncollege.com] has a program called "textbook rental" to curb resale of used textbooks. Then, one of the worst models is in the Physics department [ohio-state.edu]; they have an agreement with the publishers and a company called WebAssign [webassign.net], where although you can buy a used copy of a textbook, only the new ones have a "product key" which you need to do your (required) online homework.
Under none of these circumstances do professors pay anything for students, and (for obvious) reasons professors get the materials for free and most don't have a clue what the books cost until a student tells them (which they ignore). I can't say I'm surprised by any of this. Publishers make enormous profits by revising textbooks and requiring newer versions, and because students (who have to buy the books) don't have a choice. All the while, these new techniques are being upheld as "cost saving" and "convenient" for students. Consumer choice and the free market at work I guess.
To the hell with online textbooks!
No sympathy whatsoever (Score:2)
I had one year where I went to college and my books cost more (1200$) than my tuition (900$).
Students get swindled by booksellers, particularly campus ones. The markup is outrageous. Coming up with a new "version" of a book is all about screwing the used book market. eBooks is just another way to screw students for more money.
If the government wanted to reduce education costs, and make university/college more available to people, they should take a long hard look at some of the common practices that are pre
I hate this sort of thing (Score:2)
You know you're getting screwed. They know they're screwing you. The people who would be in a position to provide oversight knows screwing is taking place. But nobody does a goddamn thing to stop it! It's just taken to be a natural part of the order of the world like death and taxes.
Education is this beautiful thing that's been corrupted into nothing more than a giant fucking con. And it never ends. Just more fresh meat cycled through the grifter's paradise.
Open Source Textbooks (Score:2)
If it's good enough for MIT, ought to be good enough for everyone.
http://ocw.mit.edu/about/ [mit.edu]
http://www.opensourcetext.org/ [opensourcetext.org]
(and many other references)
Re: (Score:2)
I took a college algebra course to refresh (I've done calc and stat). They gave this book: http://www.amazon.com/College-Algebra-Enhanced-Graphing-Utilities/dp/0136004911/ [amazon.com]
I bought this book recently to reteach myself math: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0030291070/ [amazon.com]
The assigned book was total shit. It talked about math some, then ran directly to the graphing calculator. Most students failed that class. *I* failed that class and I passed Calculus 2 and Statistics and Probability in my sleep (my t
Buying books I can understand, but... (Score:3, Informative)
...requiring students to "buy" online books? What the crap? You don't buy the book, you license it (which this video explains [youtube.com] in a hilarious way). Students would have to use "approved" book readers to read these books. Students couldn't lend their books to other students. Students couldn't save money by buying used books. Students can't read these books without looking at a screen, and much less without a working computer (power outage, anyone?). This is by no means a good idea; maybe it would be for the book authors/publishers, but nobody else.
Anyone read/reference old textbooks? (Score:2)
In reference to e-textbooks I fear that DRM and/o
I can see it now. (Score:2)
"OK, guys. The material hasn't changed much this year, just the activation codes."
Other downsides of this model and the rental model (Score:2, Insightful)
A downside to expensive books, renting textbooks, long textbooks, and now DRM ebooks is that students will just return them or not even have access to them after finishing a class. This is VERY BAD for education. For one, students should keep their calculus book throughout their college time. Otherwise you can't look up things you'll need later. Courses are not independent islands. You need what you've learned previously, and unless you are a genius and memorized everything ...
We need to push for eithe
I just have to say (Score:2)
Even as an ebook fan (Score:3, Interesting)
What about keeping the books? (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically this is a way to kill the used book market. Make sure you have to rent your book every semester. And make sure if years later you go back to school, you will need to buy the book again aka Zune style.
Re: (Score:2)
I recall many of my professors would kindly put their textbooks on reserve at the library and suggest that we could just do our readings there instead of buying the book. This worked fine until someone in the class decided they would rather have it all to themselves and liberate it.