4 ms·
This is a little depressing. I'm a lowly adjunct at one school and this is my last semester teaching chem with just an old-fashioned textbook (which is already
by busyant 10y ago
This is a little depressing. I'm a lowly adjunct at one school and this is my last semester teaching chem with just an old-fashioned textbook (which is already overpriced).
The department head has decided to switch us over to Cengage (with all of its interactive features) next semester.
My suspicion is that the students aren't going to use any of interactive products.
Do the schools get some kind of kickback from the publishers?
- jccalhoun 10y agoNo. To the best of my knowledge there is no kickback (they did give us a Panera box lunhox and a totebag...). Like I said the sales pitch convinces them how awesome it is and how it saves money. I also think the fact that a lot of the online stuff can automatically be graded is appealing to some profs. I also think that some people are not that tech savvy so they don't see the downsides of drm that are so clear to most of us that read hacker news.
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoThey get a more insidious kickback. They get to be lazy. They mandate the "textbook" with 1 time access code that results in them having to do the least work, and the students pay. Publishers have sold them on this value prop to kill the used textbook market.
- Jill_the_Pill 10y agoMy son is taking a course at a local college, where the department assigned a $140 "custom" loose-leaf packet (basically a few chapters printed from a textbook) with "access codes" to some damned online thing. The class asked the instructor, who said: "Access codes? No, you don't need those. And a $40 past edition of the text will be just fine."