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."
Of-course this is enabled by copyrights, without copyrights anybody would be able to buy the access code (or however they get it) and then republish the text on a free website. Done.
If the publisher doesn't understand how to provide value, then others would do it for him if there were no government laws about copyrights. So you are clueless, but as I said many times - most people don't understand anything and not much can be done about it.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm back in school again after nearly 15 years and almost every book sold at the school bookstore was shrink wrapped with an access code. The worst offender I have encountered so far is my Math 060 book for Pre-Alg - after tax $233 (Pearson Learning Solutions). Alone, the access code was $120 about on the shelf behind the counter. This code and computer access is required to get our class notes and do our homework assignments. Thankfully, I didn't have to buy the iClicker remote for another $40. Still for a basic class like Pre-Algebra, I find this disgusting.
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?
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.
Actually, I was forced to this kind of thing by my department (MyITLab). I hated it. The simulations are god awful (if a behavior isn't programmed in, it isn't recognized as valid, even if it works in MS Excel) and the website only works in MSIE and Safari. (I'm in Linux, so I have to launch Windows in a virtual machine just to access the course.)
However, I've come around to it a little bit due to student feedback. These types of websites give students the opportunity to resubmit assignments multiple times for a higher grade with instant turn around (which is not something that I can offer them.) When I polled students (anonymously) if they would rather have the opportunity to resubmit for a higher grade and have assignments graded instantly or have textbooks that were $80 cheaper, they prefered the access code.
These access codes are a kick back... but instead of giving the instructor money, they are giving the instructor back time that would have otherwise been spent on grading. (Which usually gets sucked up by more intense upper level courses.)
The access code typically allows you to create an account, and may be necessary to submit the homework. You can't share the codes because each student needs to submit their own assignments.
The oldest boomers were born in 1943. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1963. This puts the oldest boomer at 20 years old. The 26th amendment was passed in 1971. Hence, all boomers were younger than the voting age when the Clean Air Act was passed. Fuck you, boomer.
dirty criminals indeed.
Check out the last couple paragraphs of the article linked in the original post:
So, by the publisher's own admission, the durable goods -- the printed book itself -- is only worth *at most* $20. While the remaining $90 is purely profit going back to the publisher for access to some canned system that cost significantly less per-student to develop and deploy.
Soooo glad I'm not in school anymore and having to deal with this sort of racket. But if I was, the first time I ran into a professor insisting that we pay up some arbitrary amount of money just to submit homework for grading, I'd be really tempted to go all Martin Luther on 'em and staple my dead-tree submission to their door/desk/face just to protest the ridiculousness of the whole thing.
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