Slashdot Mirror
With 'Access Codes,' Textbook Pricing More Complicated Than Ever
jyosim writes "Some see it as the latest ploy by textbook publishers to kill the used book market: 'access codes' for online supplements for course work. In some cases professors require students to purchase these codes in order to even see the required homework. One U. of Maine's student's struggle to find a reasonably priced textbook demonstrates the limits the new publisher practices put on students, but some argue that ultimately the era of digital course materials will be better for student learning."
They hate that you have the advantages they did in school. Now that they've crossed the bridge, it must be burned.
I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, but I'm fairly confident it's better than when the professor writes the book you use for class.
Seriously though, what programs require crap like this? I never had textbooks with such insane restrictions in any of the science courses. The closest it came was a CD-ROM filled with microphotographs and a few animations that came with my sophomore-year microbiology textbook.
All our math courses at my university require this now. While the software is good, I do feel sorry for the students--in that it makes it very difficult to buy a used book. At the bookstore all the codes and books are packaged together. To buy them separately, you have to go somewhere like Amazon.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
All patents and copyrights must be abolished and all of a sudden all of these problems go the way of a Dodo bird. Government must not be allowed to create monopolies, be it monopolies in utilities, in any creative materials, in any products and services.
I know that there is a huge number of people that disagree, then again, there is a huge number of people that don't understand the concept of freedom, the reason to have government in a supposedly 'free' society and anything about economics.
You can't handle the truth.
Hey Kids!
If your instructor is doing something like this to you, he/she is an asshole. If you can run FAR away or, if you can't avoid the person teaching, be cautious at every turn. If a prof is inflicting this type of B.S. on students then they another jerk you need to avoid in getting your education.
The unis that I have worked at are trying to avoid this every chance they get by developing their own online course system or (ugh) using Blackboard. Most profs I personally know do things to try to avoid extra costs to their students. This type of behavior is the mark of a jerk.
Digital course materials will be better for student learning, but only if they are free (as in speech).
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Is the most incompetent clod I have every had a course with going back to Kindergarden..."
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
You know, this seems to be the common solution to the "used book sales are worse than Piracy, how can we stop it?" problem. Even the video game industry has been pulling off this stupidity with their fixation on online passes lately. Nice job, bureaucratic commercial money-hogging idiots.
The access codes are just one part of a bigger problem: textbook prices. For one class this semester, I was able to purchase a Kindle, the $50 lighted Kindle case, and the Kindle version of the textbook for a combined cost that is less than the price of the hardcover textbook.
Also - it wouldn't be such an obvious scam if you could purchase only the access code and acquire your book from the secondary market. In all instances that I've seen, the access codes come only with new books.
I'm always tempted to blame the professors for choosing course materials like this; however, on more than one occasion I've heard professors complaining about pressure to switch to the latest edition. Pressure from whom? I have no idea...
college is becoming a cash grab and we need better and quicker ways to learn.
Right now at some schools due to the way classes fill up and all the required classes what used to take 4 years can now take 5 years.
We need more tech schools and apprenticeships to take the load off of the college so it can go back to 4 years also added 2-3 year core only plans can help as well.
some argue that ultimately the era of digital course materials will be better for student learning.
And some say that The Stig has three testicles, but only uses one at a time in order to prevent sextuplet pregnancies. But, the statement has no basis in fact.
The web is not the least bit short of 'some saying' that digital learning is better than anything prior and those that question this "wisdom" are old luddites that fear change, lack vision and want to stymy progress. But, simply saying that repeatedly does not make it a fact.
I'd like to see some fact based scientific evidence that these new technologies and techniques do in fact provide better learning that before. Does the online material for Chemistry 201 genuinely provide better learning than the third-time-used and battered text book originally printed 10 years ago? I just can't see how it can. The actual course material hasn't changed and simply replacing a paper book with an ephemeral online copy of the same doesn't seem likely to improve learning.
I can see that the new online material can make for more profits, greater ease for professors, greater portability provided you've got power and internet where ever you go, and even greater ease for quick look-ups by students. But, none of those benefits prove greater learning. None of them prove faster learning, better retention, deeper or easier understanding...
But, despite the lack of proof; "iPads for all students" continues to be a daily headline where 'some say it greatly enhances education' and no proof is ever given.
Well, as I've said before we need to uncouple job training and university study again.
University studies were meant for people that wanted to learn and study. Right now the whole meme is that you go to university to get a better job. There is nothing wrong with that, but that isn't what universities were created for. Not everyone should go to a University and there should be no shame in that.
This kind of obvious grab at making money off of poor college kids (and the districts/states that pay taxes for those kids behind the scenes) makes me unbelievably angry.
Personally, I would love to start writing textbooks and self-publish them to get around this system. I've already done some basic lecture notes in certain subjects and given them to students, I can try to write it up during free time. Are there good creative-commons or similarly licensed projects to start textbooks in many college disciplines? I would like to contribute to such a thing and "evangelize" for them, for lack of a better term.
I suppose a major roadblock to this idea is that professors/departments/universities need to be able to choose the book for the course, and need to know alternatives, and need to know they are just as good if not better. I feel like part of the stagnation is the idea that a certain text is the "ideal" for a class. When I was in graduate school, we ran into that problem a lot. Professors taught from certain books because "it is the standard, even when I was in school!". They treated it like a right of passage, even though the texts were often the worst pieces of shit I've ever read. Or rather, tried to read. They weren't readable at all. They basically taught out of reference books that assumed you already knew the subject. How do we convince them that, perhaps the book is ok as reference, but as a first taste of a subject, we need better materials? Better in content as well as price. I have already tried to argue this point with colleagues, but often they simply respond "Well this is the standard in the rest of the country". It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's used because its used. It's popular because its popular.
This sounds just like what the video game market occasionally pulls, with registration codes that come with the game that can only be used once, in an attempt to make resale of the product useless.
"First Sale Doctrine" says once you buy physical goods you can resell them without permission or interference from the manufacturer... but codes, they'll try to call them licenses or something like that to which FSD does not apply. So you have the textbook but can't access the quizzes that the instructor is going to be assigning, nor the references, nor the updates/corrections that they posted online, etc etc. Forcing you to buy a new book from them at the typically insane prices, just to get a code so you can do your homework.
Just another depressing bypass-consumer-protection-laws money-grab.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I always tell my students to NEVER buy from the bookstore. Always go to Amazon or an online textbook reseller. You will save a TON of money. It's my experience that you can generally save 50% or better by shopping anywhere else. That $120 code you bought at the bookstore goes for about $80 at Amazon.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
If the professors are requiring that the students log in to some part of the text book publishers website to actually view a homework assignment, then that is very much the professors fault.
Writing assignments is not that hard. And I say that having just finished preparing the tutorial and assignment for the class I'm teaching tomorrow.
I've been going around and around with Follett on this one. Under federal US law [1], colleges that receive federal money are REQUIRED to disclose ISBN numbers for course textbooks. However, the law also states that the school has the option of disclosing the ISBN numbers online with course schedules. So guess what? You actually have to register for a class at some colleges before you can get the ISBN. (This is, in fact, the case at Dallas County Community College District campuses.)
Except for Follett. Apparently, even after registering, Follett doesn't seem to want to disclose the ISBN. On top of that, if you call a Follett bookstore for an ISBN (or visit in person), the minimum-wage earning salesperson will politely tell you they are not ALLOWED to disclose the ISBN, you have to go online to get it.
More and more college bookstores are now closing the shelves to casual student browsers, so you don't even have the option of just picking up the book and looking at it for the ISBN.
[1]http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html#dcl
People in the textbook business should be ashamed. A reasonable profit and getting as many people textbooks that want to learn should be a goal.
And from a monitory standpoint, education is the single biggest payback society can invest in.
It's not only the extra cost, but it's also a loss of control over private information of the students.
I am getting ready to write a letter to my state and federal representatives over the current state of publishing in the US. This is clearly the same crap that game publishers are doing to inhibit the second hand game market. The most disgusting thing of all is what I am going to relate to you now about how the digital world is screwing over libraries:
I just found out from a friend that you can check out eBooks from the county library. I was insanely excited. I hadn't gotten my library card renewed after it had last expired so I filled out an application and was excited to go to the library the next day. Well in my excitement I decided to look at all the interesting eBooks I was looking forward to checking out. Their entire collection consists of 30 books. All of them books I had never heard of, and had no interest in. I was disappointed.
After a moment's consideration, I decided I would go to the library and offer to donate one of the following A) eBooks for them to lend out B) A few hundred dollars for them to buy new books. I talked to librarian about the donation. She wasn't sure that I could donate specifically for eBooks, so she grabbed the county employee responsible for eBook lending. I talked to her for about an hour and I am thoroughly disgusted with the publishing industry. Even more so than I was as a college student. Here is what I learned:
I understand the importance of copyright, but this is ridiculous. The people who get their eBooks from libraries do so because they can't afford the books, or they want to try before they buy. If they want to limit the number of times an eBook can be loaned out, then they should charge a reasonable rate for the books. Forbes even had an article a few months ago about this: What Is Going On With Library E-Book Lending? and again just a few weeks ago. It just makes me so angry that corporations are able to pull this kind of nonsense. I was born in the wrong generation, I think. I miss the days of customer service, and fostering loyalty amongst your consumers.
Looks like they couldn't stay in video games for long. I wonder if there's an XBL/SEN equivilant where online passes can be bought in the event of a used texbook.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
I had a business plan writing class in school. There was a textbook - Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship - which I dutifully purchased and started reading.
On the first class, the instructor said that the book wasn't needed. The reason why he specified the text was because the department secretary kept pestering him that a textbook was required for the class.
Fortunately, the book he specified was only $22.
This was at GSU.edu.
For your textbook.
Textbooks are an awfuly complicated and expensive requiement for college. One book in particular for discreet mathematics cost me $480. Not kidding. I drew out the last of my savings on that sucker.
Access codes? Access codes have actually made one class affordable.
I'm currently enrolled in a math class that requies a textbook and bundled access code for online material. Our professor uses the online services for homework and quizzes. Found out that it also gave me access to the book online in a flash module too.
Cost of the online access code? $80. Cost of the textbook? $150-250 depending on where its bought. Personally I'm opting for the $80 solution.
I'm sure most of us have had experiences with this guy and his calculus books, but he's made a fortune off of updating his book every year, getting students to shell out big bucks, all in the name of enriching textbook companies. Its not as if a calculus textbook from 20 years ago wouldn't work just as fine.
Some schools do have text books as part of the class costs so there is no added fee for them.
Don't any of you people cooperate?
20 years ago trying to charge over 90 cents per page when a xerox was something like 4 cents resulted in one guy buying the book and everyone else carrying in stacks of photocopies. Traditionally the guy who bought the book and did the photocopying sold the copies for a six pack of beer, at least thats how we did it 20 years ago. Then he was obligated to host the "back to school party" using that beer. Anyway, as for homework, I would imagine one guy could print out the coded homework for everyone else or you just pass the laptop around at study sessions?
I'm sure this will eventually be "invented" by the current generation of college students and heralded as an amazing new innovation no one has ever thought of before... each generation of teens think their generation invented rebellion, music, sex, and now, photocopying, and of course the old fogies never did anything like what they're doing today... ha ha ha
I suppose the electronic countermeasure is to put quiz and tests online behind the purchased codes, but that sounds like a PITA for the professor...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Can these types of deals be attacked because of the grading systems operated by the publishers? The publisher is not only grading but also maininting and reporting grades for students.
Have any of these grading systems been vetted? Approved by the various education bodies? Surely, the schools have their own system and there is policy that allows for grades to be recorded by another system?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
When I was in college I had two classes where the professors taught from a book that they had written. The first one felt so self-conscious about this that he would refund his royalties to any student who presented him a receipt showing they bought the book. The second put all the homework in tear away sheets at the end of the book and wouldn't accept photocopies, forcing everyone to buy his book new. I never reported the second guy to any ethics board and I still regret it.
Don't speak as if you speak for me. I'm 38 and well under the national average salary (look it up), and I hold absolutely no jealousy, envy, contempt, or even dislike for those who earn more. So you can count me off your team.
What is a 'wealth' gap? Who decides there is a certain amount of wealth that each age group is supposed to have, what are those numbers?
Nice strawman. It's not about "deciding" how much each group is supposed to have (in a moral/deontological ethical way). It's about the gap between the two groups that is measurable (and thus comparable/quantifiable) accross the decades. The gap is there, it's measurable, it's obvious, and it requires explaining. Yours is not an explanation by any stretch of the definition. Furthermore, you are asking "who" "decides" how much each group has. That same question begets the following one: who decided that the income gap must be greater than the ones in prior decades/generations?
Ok, so those in the 55+ demographic are the ones who started and built back in the 70's/80's many of the recognized companies that exist today and in doing so they made some good money. That is exactly what they intended to do.
This would be nice and dandy if these were the very first folks in the history of the US who made up companies that made money. Alas, they were not. There were businesses and businessmen before them, quite successful and their companies still exist today. And yet, the generational income gap present at the times preceeding the Baby Boomers was never the way it is now. Hand waving is not a valid argument.
Wonder what their incomes looked like 20-30 years ago when they were building their businesses (either as early employees of founders)? I'd be willing to guess
Why guess? Verify.
their incomes were not much different (in 70's/80's dollars) to today's youth, but their standards of living were probably lower.
So if their income weren't that different from today's youth (which is not true), and their standards of living were lower (they were), then the income gap as measured today is greater than what it was in the past, say, as a function of the decade in which the measurements took place.
So to the 18-35 crowd who hasn't made as much money I'd ask, where are the companies that you started?
Red herring. Not every Baby Boomer was an enterpreneur, and yet the gap between the average Boomer and the average Gen X/Y is greater than the gap that same Boomer experienced with respect to his then senior. Ergo, enterpreneurship is not a factor. It is if you want to present a fallacy as a logical argument, though.
Where are the years of hard work you put in building wealth?
Where were the years of hard work the Baby Boomers put when they were young that resulted in a narrower income gap with relation to their then seniors, narrower with respect to the currently observed income gap?
In a past article asking why kids are still carrying around heavy bookbags when all their books would fit onto a 2gb USB drive, I mentioned that the textbook companies actively refuse to publish e-book versions. They are fighting this every step of the way, and they have methods that the entertainment industry can only dream of.
"But the latest textbook enhancements, which require individual access codes to get to bonus materials online..."
Yeah, just like you can get your "enhanced" DRM-crippled DVDs or e-books with "bonus" content. Throw in a little extra crap to take peoples' attention away from the fact that they're paying more for a crippled version of the same old product.
I guess the game people are trying it, although having instituted day one dlc I no longer buy new games, since the $8-10 dlc reduces the games resale value by the same amount. I don't buy used games anymore either, because they're still priced at the same point they used to be, and I have to buy $10 worth of dlc to get the full game.
Similarly, I suspect that if the textbook companies play too many games, our smart college kids will figure out how to circumvent them.
Why every kid in america isnt carrying some inexpensive tabet full of all of their textbooks, school work and tests is a mystery to me. If we wanted to stimulate the economy, when HP was crapping out of the tablet business why didn't someone ask them to donate their touchpads (and make more!) along with developing educational systems and curriculum that would be usable tools nationwide, and make a permanent investment in our future, along with dropping education costs through the floor? Give HP a nice fat tax cut for their troubles.
What a wasted opportunity. We kept people busy doing busywork instead, most of which has little to no future value.
Aren't these publishing companies just creating a monopolistic environment? It's crazy how much these companies charge for actual printed books and now they wish to be even more restrictive then Apple. When you bought a printed book in college, you could choose to do what ever you wanted with it. But now students are still charged for the book and have no digital rights to it. Books cost more than the class almost. AUGH! And we wonder why education is so very expensive.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
As a recent grad student, I used to purchase my books through Amazon.com, as they were as low as half the price that they were through the campus bookstore. This new "access code" system would only benefit the publishers and maybe the school. What happens when a student purchases the access code, only to find out the book is sold out? For digital books, that wouldn't be a problem but not everything is available in digital media.
I can already see a way to circumvent the system.
Only one student has to make the purchase. Then, that student could notify the others in the class what the book title, author and ISBN are.
Students are strapped for cash and will find ways to save money, especially if it means circumventing an unfair system.
His name -- I still can hardly belive it: Giuseppe Pescatore Puzzolo.
That loser? Low level spark. He was taken out by Tarkus Heterodyne during the Battle Of The Crimson Clanks near Sturmhalten in 1840.
I don't require my students to purchase books. I just make PDFs of the readings and upload them to Angel. Everyone wins, well except the textbook companies....
He gave us copies for the cost of printing them instead of making us pay full rate.
In some cases professors require students to purchase these codes in order to even see the required homework.
wanted me to buy.
I demurred, used an older text and rarely found more than a word or two of difference sometimes just an iota (single character or minor spelling difference) --- then, at the end of the course, the Professor handed out a ~32pg. booklet of _errata_ in the new ``improved'' text.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
We are in more or less the same situation but we want to offer digital editions of our books.
My normal argument would be to price the product for the masses let the quality of the book and ease with which it can be obtained sell itself vs piracy or sharing.
The problem is where our books and overhead cost of production was the highest is when we targeted at a niche area.
I imagine these text book businesses are in the same boat.
They are caught with a small consumer base, high cost of overhead, and a impending change that may seriously degrade their profit margins.
I hate the situation
Some schools do have text books as part of the class costs so there is no added fee for them.
If it is added to the class cost, your still paying for the book.
To the university administration. Having the textbook publishers manage online homework/exam submission systems is the camel's nose under the tent. This is what the school is supposed to do, not the publisher.
Once these systems are in place, they will diminish the value added by the school, allowing professors to work directly with publishers and eventually push the traditional institutions out of the educational loop. Perhaps this is where education is headed. And if this is the case, lets get it over with now. Cut the university out of the loop. Have the professors deal directly with the publishers who issue certificates of course completion. But then why are we paying tuition?
Have gnu, will travel.
Oh man, "better for student learning"... As a HS teacher for the last 10+ years, this phrase is what boils my frickin blood. Education seems to be the place where charlatans and quacks can gain a strong foothold and peddle nouveau nonsense every 10-15 years, claiming to be on the cutting edge of NewEd, but never once have I seen any real G*dD@mn evidence that any of it works. Yet we buy into such crap time and time again, with each successive step making education more expensive (first for the governments, then for individuals). As for the quality of education in the last 30-40 years? Left as an exercise for the reader.
Some tech makes certain problems easier where they once were not (such as 3D visualization of molecular structure, spreadsheets, etc). I am no luddite. I love using tech when it makes total sense. What I _DON'T_ need is a layer of overpriced cruft that makes my job ultimately more difficult and diminishes the quality of education.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
It was that way back in the late 80s. My EE degree took 5 years because the first two semesters was "Class full! Take a hike!" for basic stuff that was pre-requisites for dozens of other courses. Lots of general ed classes that first year. Took a journalism class and learned all I needed to know about journalism majors. The suckfest that is the news media is no mystery to me. The class on comedy was fun, though. We actually went out to stand up shows a few times for extracurricular activity.
"...some argue that ultimately the era of digital course materials will be better for student learning."
And far greater profits for publishers...
Except that learning is becoming distributed. Publishers, colleges, professors and universities are rapidly becoming dinosaurs. Information is free and available to those who want to expend the effort to learn rather than just get a piece of paper to frame and hang on the wall. Heck, those paper collectors can buy a mill degree for that matter.
Undergraduate material is not bleeding edge information. It's basic stuff that undergrads must grasp in order to give them some sort of understanding of their major subject area.
Being able to uniquely identify individual and course and semester, creating an overall unique ID for that instance and preventing reuse of it is... diabolically efficient and profitable for the vendor.
The problem is that the costs of university education are getting so high that the benefits to the individual are being outweighed by the costs. They tell us that you must go to college if you hope to ever make anything of yourself. In the past, for a minor fee, you could do this and leverage your earning power. Today however, they extract much of the value you might have gotten from college upfront. And that doesn't talk about the intangibles, like being able to live debt free and the options that provides the relatively thoughtful and motivated young person who does go to college to improve himself.
This continues the hollowing out of the middle class.
Ultimately, the core of this problem comes down to the easy availability of debt. Many of the world's problems come down to the easy availability of debt.
The thing is, back in the day, employers assumed that they'd have to train entry-level hires. Now, they expect the universities to do the training for them - but still pay entry-level salaries.
Actually it's the boomers parents that got to blow all the pension and retirement funds. Already, nothing but debt was left for the boomers.
We keep hearing about how expensive it is to publish a book for print and yet Lulu.com does a 100 page book for $6 ($4 to the printer, $2 for their service). The author in that example gets $8 and the book sells for $14. Using those same ratios, a 300 page text book should cost the printer $12 to print and the publisher would get $6, the author would get $24 and the book would sell for $42.
Then why do textbooks cost five times that amount? You would think a textbook publisher is going to have greater economies of scale than somebody self-publishing, so the costs should be even less.
Maybe the Justice Department should quit looking at kids downloading songs and focus on price fixing and collusion among text book publishers and universities. Sure seems fishy.
LBJ and most pols since then repeatedly raped the savings and economy until nothing but old socialist dictats remain as "laws".
My dad is a physics professor and I'm very proud of him.
He spent about a month researching text books for the class he's teaching this year. He finally settled on a $300 text book that the students could purchase a bound reprint of through the University Library for $25.
I wish I had mod points so I could mod this "Fucking Hilarious". Glad I'm not the only Girl Genius comic reader on here :D
There is another solution:
http://pastebin.com/Zi1HWN0Q
Let me say first that any professor who uses his own textbook has a basic conflict of interest. Mimeo'd handouts (thus revealing my age :-) ) are one thing, but forcing students to pay up for this sort of "enhancement" is similar to the way airlines 'unbundle' so they can add a string of extra charges.
If your textbook, printed or e-book, requires "extra enhancements," then you either wrote it wrong or intended to squeeze extra money out of the students. If Khan Academy continues to impress and succeed, it'll be a rough equivalent of open source software projects. (one hopes :-) )
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It's too easy to generalize and write off an entire generation of business people, but it certainly does describe the business ethics of those who have no grounding in moral principle which might lead them to consider the long term consequence of their decisions.
The "prestigious" University of Chicago school of business, led by Milton Friedman and his ilk, weren't part of the baby boomer generation. They were the academic greed heads of yesteryear, and they were Capitalist ideologues who helped 'educate'some of the baby boomers to believe that they had no responsibility to anyone but stockholders of the companies they were hired to run. They were championed by those who used a binary perspective on the evils of Communism vs the positive attributes of Capitalism without regard to a more nuanced approach to the everyday operations within each system as they effect of the lives of the average person or the overall future.
Friedman used to go so far as to argue that a strictly financial cost/benefit ratio should be used to determine whether or not a company should pursue any business transaction, legal or not. By reducing risk/reward to monetary gain alone and ignoring social and societal impacts, the U of C business school encouraged the activities which were championed on Wall Street and which led to the bankruptcies of Enron, World Comm, Tyco, et al, as well as the egregious and nearly Cato-strophic behavior in the mortgage banking industry.
People who bury their head in the general ledgers of their companies books in order to succeed and lack sufficient connection or concern for their surrounding communities are prone to be unbalanced. Without guidance they may be wildly successful financially while concurrently benefiting from behavior that is destructive to the lives of others.
There's a fancy term in economics used to describe the short-sighted accounting perspective. It is, "externalized cost," and it's a seemingly benign catch-all phrase that categorizes the irresponsible behavior of so-called artificial persons (corporations) when they off-load environmental pollution and financial risk onto the rest of us without our consent and in many cases illegally. It's the basis for the Tragedy of the Commons, and it's the underlying theme behind the politics of the morally bankrupt policies being promoted by the Tea Potty.
I say the former because I have addressed this problem in my own courses. Granted, I teach in the liberal arts rather than the sciences where the textbook prices are the most atrocious, but the liberal arts are trying desperately to catch up. Even so, when I build my classes I do so around primary texts which for texts up to the twentieth century are largely available in the public domain. My students simply access the material on their laptops or tablets even during class. I also give them a list of books upon request so they can buy paper versions on Amazon if they like. As for the role traditionally occupied by the survey textbook, in my way of thinking that is the purpose of a lecture. With well structured lectures and handouts, a textbook becomes superfluous. Using these methods, I have managed to get textbook costs down to $0 per semester. This has also led to interesting conversations with an incredulous university bookstore. As a historian I am able to focus on primary sources as I teach, but I do not see a reason a similar approach could not work in STEM (and my apologies if this is merely a consequence of my ignorance).
I say the latter because the ability to do the former requires significant amounts of time. As our baby-boomer colleagues retire--and these make the bulk of faculty--departments are often denied funding to replace them. To cover basic course requirements, therefore, departments either have to pile extra teaching onto the remaining faculty or hire part time instructors. PTI's are becoming an ever larger part of faculties, but this is an unsustainable system. They're underpaid with no benefits and their situation has only been getting worse. At least at the universities I've worked at PTI positions pay no higher than they did more than a decade ago. As a PTI, I once calculated an hourly wage based upon what I put into a class and came out around $4/hour. This cannot last because even young, talented, and dedicated teachers have bills to pay.
As for piling extra work on present faculty, this is how we end up with the textbook situation. Faculty at state schools often must teach 4/4 course loads, and sometimes more, in addition to committee, service, and research requirements. Under such time restraints, they tend to be rather open minded toward time saving short cuts. Enter the textbook publisher's sales representative. For those who're familiar with the sitcom Scrubs, this is essentially the same character as Julie Keaton, played by Heather Locklear, who pushed the side-effects ridden Plomox. Often a young woman who is all smiles, she offers copies of all their wares, course and lectures outlines, and sometimes even free lunch. "Now here's something," thinks the faculty member, "that will allow me actually to make it home in the evening to see my spouse, my children, and maybe even watch an episode of Scrubs or post on Slashdot. Besides, look at the big glossy pictures. I got complaints last semesters that the text did not have enough pictures." (And yes, the pictures are used as a sales point.) And thus the prof will receive a free copy of the textbook for which his students will pay $200, and he builds his entire syllabus around it. Then when the next edition comes out, and the online content ends, there's another turn of the knife. In the liberal arts, the texts are largely the same but for a few small changes the knock the pages numbers off. Old syllabi must be abandoned and old editions of the book will not line up with the new syllabi. Thus the system perpetuates itself.
I am glad to work in a field where I can use the internet to make life a little more convenient on my students. I prefer to focus on primary sources anyway. For those in other fields, and indeed my own, I would propose this solution t
Knowledge Brings Fear
I've read most of the comments here, and what's depressing to me is that amidst all of the complaining and finger-pointing, I haven't seen anyone suggest even the possibility that there might be some collective action that could be taken to fight the problem and those whose greed is responsible for it.
What if every student in a class refused to buy the assigned textbook, and instead agreed on free or low-cost textbooks and resources? What if the instructors who are getting kickbacks at the cost of their students were publicly held accountable? There are probably dozens of things that could be done, if students could only find their common ground and act.
Yes, but the previous jerks had the decency to die ten years after they retired, not forty .
I have to wonder what the situtation in the EU is w.r.t. uni textbook pricing, including used.
But universities are not training the right skills vs say a tech school that does teach the right skills.
Professors at private schools may be able to get away with that, but at a state-owned school, where the professor is a public employee, it's a bribe.
Maine Revised Statue 17-A: 17-A 606. IMPROPER COMPENSATION FOR SERVICES
"Public servant" - yes, the employer is a unit of the State of Maine.
"Accepts pecunary benefit" - yes, because the professor gets royalties on the book.
"Preparing or promoting a bill, contract..." - yes, because the professor has a deal with the publisher.
"has .. an official discretion to exercise" - yes, because the professor can require students to purchase the book.
All the elements are there. Class E crime. Up to six months incarceration and a $1,000 fine. And, as a convicted felon, barred from most public employment.
Contact the press and the office of the Maine Attorney General.
Yes, but then the school actually has to say $X for tuition instead of $Y and then small print (or not at all) "plus Z for books, which is actually more than Y". If I ever were to apply to a for-profit school this is the first question I would ask: What is X? What is the *actual* cost including the bribes the publishers are giving to your profs?
AccountKiller
I worked for Cengage for about a year. That's exactly what it is. Kids bought used books all the time and then they didn't understand "But I bought the book why it not come with code!?". Because you bought it used bro, the same way a game doesnt come with the access code when its used, or if it does its probably used. It sucks, but, if your professor uses those products then you have no choice and should complain to them.
Amen to this. I'm a college prof, and it's the same for us. However, I will add a few caveats, speaking as an English teacher. First, those horrible packages sound so good. "You mean I can have my students learn basic mechanics thru online exercises I don't have to grade myself? Sweet! That will really help out this semester, because I'm teaching 20% more students and have two papers I need to get to press!" Three weeks into the semester, and the shit doesn't work. And I made my students pay out the butt for the inconvenience. I feel like a heel. I'll never do it again. Let's f-forward to next year. Dean Pelton comes raging in, "Hellooooo everyBODY!!! I've got this grate new invenshun we're going use; it's some courseware with a code that comes with this $300 book! I know, I know what you're thinking, THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS! But the code makes it TOTES worth it!!!111" Well, fuck, here we go again. This is not to mention the naifs with their tablets telling us that the urinals will be Web 2.0 interactive in the future and that we need to be down with the Digital Natives.... I wish I could catch break enough to set up my own textbooks using as much copyright-free stuff as possible. But that would not do shit for my promotion, and I really, really need that pay bump. And to keep my job. And what little I do manage to do gets fucked by the bookstore. I ordered a package set of books this semester, total cost $60. What did the bookstore do? Not order the package. Instead they charge $60 for both items in the package. As soon as I get tenure, I'm going to get a group together and we're going to write some open freaking courseware and stick it to these sphincters. That turned into a rant. But screw it. I'm leaving it. Now I'm going to start filling out paperwork. And grading.
The other scam out there is the vanity textbook. This is where publisher takes a few pages from a professor inserts them into chapter appendixes and voila the prof gets the ego boost as a textbook publisher, these textbooks can't be use on the open market as they are custom, the textbook companies make more money, and the poor student pays for it all.
Why not have a clause of receiving federal funding be that Universities must provide materials for the text books, and those text books be free of charge. Also have universities allow professors to write books and other materials for the university in place of publishing papers and other tenure requirements. This way you have higher education creating materials that work for them and building a knowledge base that actually benefits students.
ARM!
So this is DRM for physical paper books... You basically are forced online to register digitally by the sounds of it.
Calling this a scummy scheme, is an insult to scummy schemes everywhere.
In my medical school, students simply do not buy any books, with the exception of a Netter Anatomy ($50). Each class has an unauthorized but secretly encouraged dropbox where dozens of pirated books are stored. The publishers became too greedy, so now instead of earning a few hundred dollars per student, they get nothing. The professors realize this too, and frequently release powerpoints filled with publisher derived images.
As a college student myself, I was baffled at the prices of textbooks. I collaborated with a close friend and we started a company to try and combat this problem (www.ReTextbook.com). To start off, we launched a textbook price comparison tool. Next semester we'll be starting an automated textbook trading system, the cost to actually trade your book through our site will be so substantially low that it will make sense to trade your math textbook worth $100 to someone so you can get your chemistry textbook that's only worth $70.
My first day of classes this semester I was surprised to find so many students in my class that were unaware of a textbook price comparison website, I admit we're not the only ones doing this (We are however the only ones that will be offering the textbook trading system). What was even more surprising was that my teacher said she'd mention the website to her other classes. I just assumed that the teachers were in bed with the college. Granted this is a community college, maybe things are different for different colleges.
If we're fortunate enough to grow and have a persuasive impact on the textbook industry, it is my promise to all of our users (and slashdot members) that we will actively fight 'access codes.' It's only fair that if you're going to spend a bunch of money on textbooks that those textbooks be worth something to another student should you choose to sell or trade your textbook.
I ran into this after already renting a book for my class (Math). The teacher did not mention anything about it until the class had already started, and I was stuck with a rented book and no access to my homework. I did not have the money to buy a new book at this point either. What I had to do was to sign up for a free 17 day trial and finish all my coursework in that time. It sucked major donkey balls to say the least but I got an A.
The changes are beginning with things like Coursera and Udacity. The problem is this... as a hiring manager, how are you going to compare two applicants, one who has a degree with coursework in machine learning, and another who has taken all the machine learning courses available for free on Coursera and Udacity? Which one will even get past the HR screening process?
For my math(s) class, I had to pay $45 JUST to do the homework using a crappy flash site. $75 for ebook and homework access, $220 for physical book, ebook, and homework access.
we also need less people in college and more trades like learning as there are alot of people in college that should not be there.
Unfortunately it's probably the uni applicant... because H.R. drones are too god damned lazy to do even a simple google search.
H.R. is one of the worst "professions" out there and it's ignorance helps create just about every corporate mess that's out there right now.
Students learn best, with few exceptions, from the professor whose salary and benefits they are helping to pay. Access codes are a scam to pad the pockets of the textbook publishers that have a stranglehold on the market and just gives teachers an extra opportunity to be lazy.
Drawing from my own recent college experience: I had a business teacher in charge of teaching MS Office Suite who required a textbook with an online access code for additional "curriculum." (I use the term loosely because, quite frankly, an eighth grader could have done better.) The first hurdle was in realizing that the textbook actually had an access code, much to the sorrow of some classmates that had purchased used versions with spent codes (more $$$ for the publisher though in the end!). The second hurdle was in learning how to use the website - a number of my classmates were older adults who struggled, in general, with using the Internet. The third hurdle was figuring out how to be accurately tested on your knowledge. The professor (God help us) allowed the online testing to automate the grading for her - which especially sucked when your submitted example did not EXACTLY match what 'it' expected to see. I formed a group of students that rotated turns for getting a bad mark so that everyone else could benefit from his/her mistakes. The fourth hurdle was that the online service would go offline at times, making the tests a pain to finish before the cut-off. We all had full course loads, and some students worked a job and had children to take care of - scheduling is hard enough. How I wish I had been allowed to test out of the class.
So no, the whole "access code" racket, along with every single of its proponents, can go rot in hell.
Publishers of school texts are the one last vestige of the paper book era. These folks have consolidated and fought and so on for years, and now you have only a handful fighting over each other for the best book. You want to reform education? Go back to the basics where the textbook publishing companies are regulated/mandated to provide certain content and subject matter, and the more teachers and educators are involved in this process, the more helpful the text would be for most...
But, that is not the case over the past 20-30 years - and what you see now is a mish-mash of features sets, and crazy fake (unsecure) websites
that are supplements to the core text. These are, for the most, supported poorly and would take years to master (which we expect our teachers to mostly do on their own dime and time). Instead, the teachers and departments they fall under should decide their course material and who and what is published in it.
I know I wouldn't teach from a text that was poorly written, poorly edited and in some cases absolutely unproofed before put to print.
AND as an added bonus, the cost for such materials has absolutely skyrocketed - hence the push back from text book publishers to put all content into the digital realm, and if they do, charge incredible amounts of money to get it.
This is one area that is corrupt and a monopoly - which is why you'll find many public & private teachers now build their entire year's
studies around the required curriculum, but utilizing little if any material.
FYI - did you know that in Europe, Japan, China and other countries - textbooks are almost phased out and the image of an 8-year old wielding a 100 lb. backpack are almost alien to most every other country in the world, save the USA>.. Material is taught almost exclusively through lecture and sample texts that illustrate the point.
Amazing that more folks don't see this and using logic and reason, force the end upon the mighty textbook publishers! Until that happens, US education (in this area) is at the behest of rich book companies that don't give a hoot who's reading their material.
Don't even get me started with these, and once again the politics of forcing teachers now to become "data miners" and provide realtime info in regards to childs attendance and grades.... Give em all a budget of $1500 a year so they can do more with what they already don't have and either fully-fund NCLB (thanks to Bush the II'd) or ditch the law entirely...
What a waste of time!
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college—when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her—but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong—something that only pirates would do.
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA—the Software Protection Authority—would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment—for not taking pains to prevent the crime.
Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (Ten percent of those fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)
Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were a dim memory.
There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.
Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were illegal; the debuggers' developers were sent to prison.
Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for class exercises.
It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a modified system kernel. Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.
Dan concluded that he couldn't simply lend Lissa his computer. But he couldn't refuse to help her, because he loved her. Every cha
That's not to say online additional content is useless -- it's probably quite useful. But it's also fixed -- you write the book, you write the web site, you're done, or you go onto the next edition of the same book or whatever. This isn't exclusively a textbook thing, either; plenty of books intended for professionals and others have "additional web content" available.
The difference is this: when I buy a book, say, for some hardware or software development thing, aimed at professionals, that web content pretty much just comes with the book. You'll look in an appendix somewhere, it'll tell you the URL, you download or read online or whatever. Logically, just an extension of the book.
The textbook publishers could do the same thing here. They're charging 2x-4x as much for the book in the first place, the web content isn't inherently more expensive, it doesn't need more maintenance, and in fact, once you've developed the framework, it's pretty much just a bit of extra content uploaded for every book. But of course, the whole point of the site is to lower the value of used textbooks, making it difficult or even impossible to use a used (or even rental) book for a course that requires this access. Some publishers will sell you an access code, for a fairly substantial percentage of the cost of the book/code bundle.
-Dave Haynie
This happened in New Zealand in the 1990s. Professors would write books, revise them every year and require students have up to date compies. The campus bookshop would pay kickbacks on sales. It came to a head when a group of computing students formed a buying group and went around the campus bookshop by going direct to the publisher, obtaining books at 90% below the retail price. They were sued for copyright infringement - and lost. This was because the publisher was in the USA and technically they were parallel importing the books - the prof had assigned NZ copyright to the bookshop. This kind of thing still happens.
ts the normal evolution of capitalistic economy. The same thing is happening in Mexico, older generations are retiring with magnificent pensions, new generations were duped with the mantra "the current pension and public health care schema is unsustainable, we must cut on YOUR entitlements". Radio, TV, newspapers, all kept repeating it until everybody thought it was true. How can a country with the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, be running out of money? I see the same ideology is being brainwashed into the new generations in the US too. It's simply that the capitalistic economy is reaching one of its overproduction, stagnation cycles. There is a lot of money, it's just that the rich guys keep it frozen because "the conditions are not right for investing OUR money" Like they found that money while being hermits in the dessert.