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Competition In the Free Textbook Market
bcrowell writes "The NYTimes has an editorial plugging Flat World Knowledge, a startup that will offer college textbooks inexpensively (~$30) in print, and free as PDFs. They plan to make their profits from add-ons like podcast study guides and mobile phone flashcards. Books will be licensed under CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike. Mashups and customizations are encouraged, but the NC license is incompatible with strong copyleft licenses such as the GFDL used by Wikipedia. Other companies trying to find a workable business model for free textbooks include Ink Textbooks (revenue from online homework) and Freeload Press (revenue from ads inside the books). So far, none of these companies seems to have succeeded in building up much of a catalog of books; it seems more common for authors of free textbooks to take a DIY approach, putting PDFs on their own web pages, and sometimes arranging on-demand printing with vanity-press publishers like lulu.com. Lots and lots of web sites exist to help people find free textbooks, and CalPIRG has an active campaign pushing for affordable textbooks."
One of the nicest things I find about studying in Finland is that the university provides enough textbooks in the library for students to use. It's nice to escape the cycle of buying textbooks and then having to sell them four months down the road.
Now, someone once argued with me that information changes and you need to have the latest info. Well, I replied, there's several years lead time from writing to publishing a text and therefore, it's out of date before it's published. And besides, tell me what advances in business that are occurring that requires those in B-school to have the "latest" info? Hmmm? (Even in the group psychology class where you'd think with the social sciences improving there'd would be a need for up to date info. Nope. I had to buy a $120 paperback that told us about Myers-Briggs and when you had a problem with an employee, the correct answer for everything was send him to "sensitivity training". I'm not fucking kidding.) If you have to teach the latest info, then you shouldn't use textbooks.
I believe the price has more to do with publishing companies, rather than the professors who write them.
Where do you get the idea that opencourseware constitutes complete course material? Opencourseware is simply a central web site for individual class web pages. Professors at any university, not just MIT, often setup web sites for their courses. On such web sites, you can usually find the course syllabus, list of homeworks, and sometimes homework solutions and occasionally lecture notes of variable quality. Does that constitute everything you need to learn the subject? Most of the time no way. I have been looking at opencourseware sites for economics courses. They still assign readings and homeworks from textbooks that everyone else uses.
I can't think of a single course i took where the vetted textbook isn't available for student-use photocopies in the library. I would have LOVED something like this to be able to have all the hardcopy data and simply photocopy the problem sets (and possibly the corresponding back of the book).
Is this something thats specific only outside the US? Do american universities not do this as well?
And dont give me the "but it's never in long enough" cop-out if they do =). You can photocopy a whole semesters worth of problems the first time you get it and it wont amount to much.
Ice Cream has no bones.
One of the reasons textbooks cost so much is because professors' salaries are bad. There is a very very good incentive for a professor to charge a lot for their book.
Speaking as a college professor, I think you're wrong on both points. Professors' salaries are actually very reasonable these days. Also, very little of the retail price of a $130 goes in the professor's pocket. Most textbooks do not make any significant amount of money for their authors -- the exceptions are home-run books aimed at the most popular freshman courses, and there just aren't that many of those. The typical motivation for a professor to write a textbook is that he doesn't like the choices that are already available.
The reason for high textbook prices is profit-taking by publishers. In the last 25 years, textbook prices have risen much, much faster than can be explained by inflation.
Find free books.
That was just a caveat, I do however agree with your point. I would always buy the Math books, international edition
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
It really depends on the subject and professor, but at least at undergraduate level, lectures or lecture notes alone rarely substitute a good text when one is available.
I am not really sure what you mean by "opencourseware does provide lectures". Most opencourseware class web sites provide neither lecture notes nor recorded lectures.
I've thought about not buying the books myself, but often it's a matter of convenience. For example, I'm in Matter and Interactions (an "honors" intro physics course) and we've had to buy, each semester, a $120-ish, paperback textbook. It's a decent textbook, sure, but horribly overpriced. But having to chase down a copy from the library or a friend whenever I want to do the homework (which can be at strange times) or when I (and consequently my friends) need to study for an exam is a big hassle.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
most professors make between $80k and $130k per year at my university.
Associate professors make a little less with most between $50k and 90k per year.
and I can prove it if you ask.
now why do you think that $100k is a bad salary?
I'm finishing my first year of uni in a couple of weeks and I'm really happy that my lecturers have gone to the trouble of producing "tutorial books" which are just questions for each of my modules and short answers in the back.
We do have 2 required books that we were told to buy but I managed to get though the first term without them and one book I haven't used at all. The other one I have. Its a good electronics textbook clear and a decent level of detail. I don't think theres any reason why any of the other hundred general electronics textbooks you can buy would be significantly different. Maybe I'm lucky but friends who are at different unis and on different courses are in similar situations.
anyway my point is that this is great for people in my situation.
Most Damage is done by people who are AWAKE
There are 3 professors I know of who wrote their own book (well one is technically just notes and questions but it is as good as a book)
one has it free for students in his class on his website
one has it free for students in his class on his website and has an arrangement for really cheap printing if you want.
one sells it in the bookstore for a lot of money and the other professor who teaches the course switched to a free book halfway through.
As a professor, I second both your points.
I will also add that many professors would love to contribute to open materials, but cannot because posting something to their website doesn't count in one's tenure dossier. If a company like FlatWorld Knowledge can underwrite the textbook (even with just the promise to make it available, no upfront cost) it will encourage the production of open educational material.
However, I contacted FWK and found that they're only focusing on business and economics texts for the time being.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
exactly, and most state colleges don't give any thing but text book knowledge like you say, but to get the job you need the piece of paper. I'm sure I could pay a professional from my field 15k to make me his assistant and teach me all he knows for a year and I'd know more and save money then when I'm done w/ school, but I'd never get hired since I don't have a degree.