Slashdot Mirror
Open-Source College Textbooks Gaining Mindshare
bcrowell writes "The LA Times has a front-page article about how open-source college textbooks are starting to gain traction. One author says, 'I couldn't continue assigning idiotic books that are starting to break $200,' and describes attempts by commercial publishers to bribe faculty to use their books. The Cal State system has started a Digital Marketplace to help faculty find out about their options for free and non-free digital textbooks, and the student group PIRG has collected 1200 faculty signatures on a statement of support for open textbooks."
...few have lived to tell the tale.
Seriously, though, you can expect a HUGE pushback on this from the publishing industry (college textbooks are a big moneymaker, especially considering how overpriced many textbooks are) and even from some professors (they write the books, after all).
And there is another issue too: Who is going to write these open source textbooks? Even though academics don't usually get paid particularly well for their writing, it's unlikely that many academics are going want to tackle something as big as a survey-level textbook for free (with the occasional exception like the professor in the article).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I prefer to buy a $200 textbook and sell it the next semester for about the same price instead of downloading the e-book and printing out the pages!
Printing an e-book (legal or illegal) is more expensive; printer cartridges are as expensive and the quality is nowhere near a real textbook.
slashdot rocks
Calculus hasn't changed in like what, 400 years? And yet they keep coming up with new texts all the time. Why is this?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I prefer to download it as a torrent - oh and the solution guide, too, for free.
Who prints them?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Seriously, though, you can expect a HUGE pushback on this from the publishing industry (college textbooks are a big moneymaker, especially considering how overpriced many textbooks are) and even from some professors (they write the books, after all).
This is the pushback against high monopoly pricing. They are starting to find the breaking point in an otherwise inflexible market (Ya gotta have that book).
As the alternatives start to errode the monopoly, the publishers will adjust to find the maximum profit point, but the policies that are put in place to curb runaway prices will remain for quite some time.
The truth shall set you free!
A friend just dropped 200 bucks on a math book for a fairly low level math course. It was brand new, because of course it was a new revision for this year.
Differences? Bug fixes, essentially. So because they fixed a few of their own errors, he had to spend full price instead of the used price ( which is still a rip off ).
Couldn't he have gotten the old one online for a good price? No, because on the first day of class his professor checks to make sure he has the right book.
If none of this raises anybody's suspicions, I have a bridge for sale. cheap!
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Many of the publishers are including a multimedia CD in the back of the book, which is pretty much useless. Perhaps this is part of their excuse for increasing the cost.
Textbooks are knowledge. Knowledge should be free. Especially in established subjects. A lot of math doesn't really change much. The textbooks shouldn't have to either. The publishers struggle to keep changing the text so old versions will become irrelevant. They add new problem sets, pretty much. It's their way of squashing the second-hand market.
Publishers should sponsor free Open-Source books. The work has already been done. Improvements and corrections will happen organically and become available as they happen. There is little cost to their upkeep and students will always have access to the most recent version and can update at any time.
Where is the money made? Invest in creating new problem sets that are companions to these open source books. Universities could take them or leave them, but since there is an actual "added value" in putting the effort in to create and verify these problem sets, I think it would be profitiable. Publish and sell these workbooks.
Make old problem sets available online for free. Heck, it'd likely be a tax deduction! Make the answers to these problem-sets available freely and in an obvious way. This will encourage schools to pay for the newest problems sets to discourage cheating.
I honestly think with this model, everyone can win.
Listen, I've worked for the largest educational publishers in the world both in NJ and in Australia.
Here's the deal. We sell a product with educational content, but it's a product. We do a damn good job trying to bundle subscription services with books in order to crush the use of used books. We demand that profs use the online services to assign work for credit in order to make the books essential. We put out new editions every three years and, depending on the subject, they're the same with some minor changes and a cool new cover.
Now I don't happen to think this is a crime or unethical - IT IS A BUSINESS and we want to sell books. I've made a nice six-figure salary doing it and like my job.
Such as connecting to a REAL database, rather than a toy one?
How about proper language support?
How about simple licensing?
PDF export?
MathML/LaTeX?
Ease of inclusion in assistive technologies (because it is a properly formed XML type)?
Most of the "advanced" features are VERY POOR imitations of the functions in a DTP program.
I disagree. It would be a possibility if "Professors" were some monolithic guild, but I think they are not. Whilst some might make lots of money from having their books set as required textbooks, the majority of lecturers have no incentive to set proprietary books and in fact have several incentives not to (not having to keep up to date themselves on where information in the book has shifted to this year, is one of those). Hence if a viable alternative to the expensive textbooks appears, the majority will take it once the concept has sunk in.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
and it is indeed a huge racket. We buy books by the truckload for (relatively) cheap, sell them to both bookstores and directly to students online. Buyback gives them a small fraction of it back (beer money for semester break), then the books get sold again. Lather, rinse, repeat until the book is too outdated or too ragged. We offer no kickbacks to any professor to promote any book or version. That may perhaps be done on a more local level.
There are many profs that have published their own dead tree textbooks, but they are usually only a niche market for their own school. A true open-source Etext could surely be useful, but could eventually have Wikipedia-type battles on content. All textbooks have a slant, and it could be problematic to accommodate all. Maybe you could have a filter in your reader? "Click here for the Darwinistic version, click here for Creationist version".
Keeping multiple copies of the same book in the multiple revisions is a pain. The various profs want to teach from different versions, so we must keep old versions indefinitely. Handling and tracking large amounts of books is a huge, labor-intensive problem (and we have quite a bit of automation as well).
We are dipping our toe into the Ebook waters cautiously. It makes sense in many ways as far as shipping and handling, but removes the gravy train of buyback. I wonder how many will lose their Ebook to Windows crashes (hey, this is /. we need some Anti-Windows content). They can download them again for free, providing they have proof of purchase (which may have also disappeared in the Windows crash).
I wonder that if/when the DRM gets cracked, and one kid can sell 500 copies of the textbook for $10 how that will affect the concept.
Universities are often managed as businesses. Let them act like ones and help their customers.
That's mostly an US-ism only (although, as it happends, US-isms rub on others... ) The very concept of "education industry" makes me hurt.
I count that as a weakness not advantage of the CS field. This is why so many CS people I have met can't seem to tell their ass from a hole in the ground. Great...so you know everything there is to know about the latest wizbang tech, but your understanding of the underlying systems is absolute garbage because they teach the latest wizbang instead of solid theory. It breeds technicians that can't troubleshoot worth a damn.
They attempt to teach the solution of the day rather than critical analysis of the problem itself. Imagine a math class that only taught how to use the popular counting technology of the day. Abacus, adding machine, calculator, computer, etc. You would be forever stuck in a cycle. Or you just teach the math and allow for new solutions to calculating said math to come about.
In the CS realm, why focus on a specific example of a buffer overflow. Buffer overflows themselves pretty much are all the same, just different specific implementations, but the problem itself is basically the same.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Great idea. And it seems to me that academic writing is more about prestige than money, anyway. I would think that a university would love to brag about how much its professors contributed to the textbooks that their rivals are using.
Finally, there should be a great "public good" argument in favor of this. Universities get a lot of public funding and many have huge treasure chests built up. If they help to create great textbooks that are FREELY available to public schools, that would be be a clear public service to justify taxpayer support.