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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?
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.
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.
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 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
All patents and copyrights must be abolished and all of a sudden all of these problems go the way of a Dodo bird.
Heh.. Every once in a while you get it right, but sometimes you gotta call in the cavalry to deal with the corrupt local sheriff. And, since access to natural resources and rights of way is a birthright, we need them to protect us from the local corrupt industrialist that tries to claim exclusivity of those resources. One of the ways to do that is to have feds provide the service itself. Strong vigilance is needed to keep the feds in line, revoke their power when they abuse it (this is where the general public fails miserably), but on the whole they are very much needed to ensure that those who take, give something back.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
For your textbook.
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.
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.
At least treat it like a natural monopoly. That is, based on a percieved need (which may be genuine or not), a monopoly is granted, BUT with it comes significant restrictions on pricing and and significant requirements on availability for all in order to limit the damage to society.
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?
The most notable one is Khan academy. MIT also has open courseware (not quite the same). If you're interested in writing your own textbook, check my homepage in the link and see if you're interested. Among other things, we're trying to make electronic textbooks available cheap (generally not free, because there *is* a lot of work in making a good one, but in the $10-$20 range, and DRM free). Even if you're not interested, there's some useful info on DIY there if you want to do it on your own.
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.
And I'm actually well above average myself, with good savings, investment, and income. That's not the point. The point is the systemic risk that having wealth gaps like this creates is very bad. Like slowly imploding the economy as the consumer base fails bad. Like spiking crime rates bad.
You project these feelings of envy(Who am I supposedly envious of, the nebulous "rich"?) for what reason? It's not like you have anything to gain from assuming I'm just a bad person. Explain your assumptions.
I was not aware Khan had college-level materials, last I checked thought I only saw high school. Thanks for the tip. MIT OCW is nice but rather complete; often cannot find textbook or notes, and cannot put together much of a curriculum from what they have (yet, anyway).
I agree, families need to be fed so doing free would be difficult in some cases, but I am certainly an advocate for cheap textbooks without all the overhead of a publishing company, and their insistence on new editions every year just to keep inflated prices. Electronics isn't exactly my field, but I appreciate the DIY info. I will take a look at it and see what could be done.
Is your press able to contact universities to get them to switch? As I said, one of my biggest concerns is convincing people to switch texts.
He gave us copies for the cost of printing them instead of making us pay full rate.
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.
Access to the book != access to the online content which is enabled by the code and tied to an individual user but you knew that, didn't you?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
One of the ways to do that is to have feds provide the service itself. Strong vigilance is needed to keep the feds in line, revoke their power when they abuse it (this is where the general public fails miserably), but on the whole they are very much needed to ensure that those who take, give something back.
LOL
I think you should also hire a fox to hire your henhouse. I hear their expertise on this matter is unmatched.
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.
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.
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
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
Wow, thanks roman I so rarely get to use this in a sentence...WHOOSH!
The problem isn't the text, its that a lot of the access code crap is required to turn in homework through the site. Its basically a tollbooth that if you abolished copyright tomorrow wouldn't do jack because they'd still be able to put a toll on the homework.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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
The average salary has gone from having a family, a decent house and a small car on one income in the 50's and 60's to
I hope the money will last for rent and noodles on 2 incomes in the 90's and 00's.
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
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.
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
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.
I'm also familiar with coursera.org and udacity.com These aren't textbooks but have a bunch of small video lectures in whatever course they're offering and may be worth looking into.
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.
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.
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?
Such a deal! I have a bound reprint of a textbook on chaos theory. It's hardback, 200 pages, very ugly, and the halftones were destroyed in the process. I think it was $90.
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.
It would have been simpler if you just said you don't understand and you don't understand copyrights and haven't a clue what you're on about. That would have saved us some time. It would have been honest, too.
(No, it isn't copyright.)
They need the code to access the site to submit, grade, and record their work. The use is only good for the duration of the class. You *CAN* buy the books cheap. You can even buy them used. What you can't do is buy the CODE for the website because it was good for only one use. You can buy a used book and a new code.
Copyright, again, has nothing at all to do with this other than you're incorrect zealotry assuming that it has. This isn't a difficult thing to grasp so I'm forced to conclude that you're a fucking idiot which is shameful. With your low user ID you'd think that we'd have taught you a few things by now but it appears that is a mistaken assumption on my part, a failure on our part, or just an impossible task.
I, unlike you, will accept my failings and admit them. What I should have been doing all these past years is babysitting you to remind you that you're not smart enough to speak without doing some thinking and research before typing. Now, try again, and next time it will be $80 for the online course work.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
A little late replying, hopefully you'll see this.
We can't really do much with universities at the institutional level, but we can work with individual faculty who want to switch. We have already been contacted by a bookstore at a major U about getting copies of one of our books. It's up on amazon now for $9.99 with no DRM, and we'll make it available through the B&N academic books program as well. One of our founders is a prof at a major university and started this in part because students couldn't afford to buy the textbooks for her classes. She was also frustrated with her own experience in writing a textbook, and wanted to offer alternatives.
Some of the DIY stuff is pretty straightforward, but some of it (using regular expressions to do references) takes a bit of computer ability.
We also like reading a lot of other stuff, so we're publishing an interesting range of things, with a history book, a political non-fiction book, one in health and beauty, an academic mystery, and a young adult paranormal coming out this fall.