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Even with paper textbooks, publishers will now provide online assignments (which is convenient for universities) and other online materials which you will not b

Even with paper textbooks, publishers will now provide online assignments (which is convenient for universities) and other online materials which you will not be able to sell (it will expire) with the book. So they force students to buy new textbook for each class.

samtho 3y ago
This is classic rent seeking behavior. The more insidious aspect is that this is foisted upon a captive audience of kids/young adults that agreed to tens of thousands in non-dischargable debt when they turned 18.
- tacocataco 3y ago
  Didn't the kids go into debt to learn how the world really works? This is how we are. For now.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
The crazy thing to me is that for a lot of the classes that use these online materials, nothing has changed in 50 years. 100-300 classes are largely the same as they were before digital learning. The problem from a broader point of view is a coordination problem. The people making the buying decisions (professors and departments) are not the people paying (the students). I would wholeheartedly support legislation that forced professors to pay the same textbook fees as their students, and for departments to be required to cover the costs for scholarship students. I’ll bet we would see a lot more schools opting into open source textbooks and articles from the library if that were the case.
- bluish29 3y ago
  > I would wholeheartedly support legislation that forced professors to pay the same textbook fees as their students, and for departments to be required to cover the costs for scholarship students. What will happen is that universities will pass these costs to all students where now paying students will pay more. A better regulation will be encouraging and funding more open access materials that can be used and require public funding receivers to adopt them or decrease the funding and cap the tuition increases.

samtho 3y ago

This is classic rent seeking behavior. The more insidious aspect is that this is foisted upon a captive audience of kids/young adults that agreed to tens of thousands in non-dischargable debt when they turned 18.

tacocataco 3y ago
Didn't the kids go into debt to learn how the world really works? This is how we are. For now.

dghlsakjg 3y ago

The crazy thing to me is that for a lot of the classes that use these online materials, nothing has changed in 50 years. 100-300 classes are largely the same as they were before digital learning. The problem from a broader point of view is a coordination problem. The people making the buying decisions (professors and departments) are not the people paying (the students). I would wholeheartedly support legislation that forced professors to pay the same textbook fees as their students, and for departments to be required to cover the costs for scholarship students. I’ll bet we would see a lot more schools opting into open source textbooks and articles from the library if that were the case.

bluish29 3y ago
> I would wholeheartedly support legislation that forced professors to pay the same textbook fees as their students, and for departments to be required to cover the costs for scholarship students. What will happen is that universities will pass these costs to all students where now paying students will pay more. A better regulation will be encouraging and funding more open access materials that can be used and require public funding receivers to adopt them or decrease the funding and cap the tuition increases.