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I notice that the open book that this course is based on was developed with some relationship to the Washington State community college system. I wonder if com
by a3n 6y ago
I notice that the open book that this course is based on was developed with some relationship to the Washington State community college system.
I wonder if community college systems could save us from the tyranny of expensive commercial text books and their vicious cycle of edition after edition, causing perfectly good used books to not be "relevant" for next year's class.
University professors are probably more incentivised to develop expensive traditionally published textbooks, both to keep up their prestige, and to trade on that prestige.
Community college teachers probably have less natural prestige, and may thereby be more free to focus on student needs than their own.
In any case, I've started reading through this course, and it's fabulous.
https://lumenlearning.com/ https://lumenlearning.com/
- dan-robertson 6y agoAre expensive commercial textbooks an American thing or does it just depend on the university? I studied in the U.K. and I think we weren’t meant to be examined on things that weren’t either on the blackboard or in homework. A few lecturers had written their own books but they weren’t super expensive and no one bought them because the libraries had them and the material went on the blackboard anyway. I also feel like my professors wouldn’t want to teach a course that required an expensive textbook for moral reason, but maybe that’s just me thinking too highly of them.
- a3n 6y agoExpensive commercial anything is an American thing. Textbooks. Education in general. Medical care. Rent vs income.
- dan-robertson 6y agoNot all American weirdness is unique to America. Eg oftentimes Canada can be similar. Education in the U.K. is still pretty expensive, depending on what one considers the cost to be. Also Americans tend to have higher incomes than other countries so it isn’t necessarily shocking when some things are more expensive.
- 7thaccount 6y agoHow many other countries charge for the cost of pretty much any degree, the full salary of an electrical engineer that is several years into their degree? Like literally, if I put every penny into paying my degree off it would take over a year. That seems pretty excessive, when even in the US, you used to be able to work part time at a minimal wage job to pay it all off.
- avogato 6y agoExpensive textbooks are the norm. Even worse, it's common now to package the book with a key for some online quiz service. You have to buy the brand new $100-200 book to get a valid key, so you can't try to get by with an old edition or share books.
- enriquto 6y agoThis is really shitty. How do students put up with that?
- dan-robertson 6y agoAnd how do their professors justify the cost that their choices imply?
- cnasc 6y agoIn college I just didn’t buy textbooks because they were rarely necessary. A few classes (economics in particular) sometimes assigned homework problems in textbooks which would be randomized between editions so I couldn’t get a cheap used version. I just asked a classmate if I could take pictures of the relevant pages and never had a problem.
- waterheater 6y agoDepends entirely on the professor. Some professors develop their own textbooks and release them for free. https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/ https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/