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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.
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!
My Chemistry professor last year told me each year the faculty votes on which book to use. The book publishers all come in, give a pitch, bribe them with gifts, and also provide canned lectures slides and assignments for the professors who don't want to prepare on their own. Thats how they get professors and universities to agree to this shit. I wouldn't be surprise if there is a full on kickback to the universities too...
Whenever I see this "you need to have this special software provided only by the book company to do assignments for [extremely basic course]," that's a sign your university and/or professors sold you out.
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...
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 recently had to put up with this for a nonsense "speech" course. I bought a used book, then found out about the access codes on the first day of class. You could buy access codes separately, but the teacher announced on the third day that all codes had a problem, that she would circulate a single code to the entire class, but in order for any work to count, students had to being in a receipt from the college book store. No other choice was given. It was pure extortion.
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
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.
Please don't insult our intelligence, the e-sites reduce grading time. Charging your students for homework on top of tuition that is going up faster than inflation, and has for three decades, in the face of falling efficacy, is highway robbery of the young. You should be ashamed of yourself, but obviously are not.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
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?
"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.
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.
He gave us copies for the cost of printing them instead of making us pay full rate.
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
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.
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.
That'll only work in some classes. Junior/Senior level classes that would probably work well. Freshman courses half the class would be going to the administration to complain that they spent all this money on these books that the professor isn't using. And then the administration would go to the professor and try to coerce them into using the books.
In fact, they already do that, even when nobody complains. When I was taking German classes a couple years back, there was an online component (that was rarely used because NOBODY like it) -- and the administration got reports on how many students had created an account vs. how many were enrolled in the course. And if all the students hadn't bought an account, it was considered the professor's responsibility to ensure that they did.
This is true, but it has funny results sometimes. I used to run the computer labs at PSU and the English Language Program bought a disk called "Focus on Grammar" by Pearson Thompson. The thing used SecuROM and required admin privileges (and the manifest was in the EXE "requireAdministrator")
One thing you learn when you have 1200 or so odd Windows machines to manage is no-one gets admin privs. They ended up having to send it all back because the courseware it came with violated basic Windows security rights.
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
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.
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."