11 ms·

There is something I don't understand. From the article it seems that this only provides for the creation of free/affordable textbooks, but does not force the u

by gosub 14y ago

There is something I don't understand. From the article it seems that this only provides for the creation of free/affordable textbooks, but does not force the use of them in colleges. Am I wrong thinking that affordable textbooks are already available? What is being done to prevent colleges and professors from using 150$, annual, nth edition of the same old textbooks?

hermannj314 14y ago
Exactly. Directly from the bill "Nothing in this section shall be construed to mandate faculty use of any particular textbook or related materials." Western civilization, calculus, algebra, 19th century American literature. Yeah, you are going to need the up-to-date 30th-Anniversary collector's edition with never-before-read author's commentary and over 15 pages of deleted problem sets.
- brador 14y ago
  What if courses were required to show the total cost of the progam including the cost of mandatory textbooks? That way, at least the students know the full price of what they're in for.
  - lotu 14y ago
    The thing is the cost of text-books can vary a lot. Very often you can get a used text book, or even a new one for cheaper than advertised by going online. Students can and do share textbooks. So publishing a total price is very impractical, and if you care that much the required texts are often listed next to the course for you to look up yourself.
VSerge 14y ago
At first glance it would seem only logical that the use of these textbooks be made mandatory. On the whole I agree, that this first step is necessary but insufficient, an that without teeth its effect will be much weaker. However, imposing at the state level one particular textbook per subject matter would be foolish - imagine just 10% of the textbooks are badly done and you have 5 classes out of 50 that would be required to be taught with poor textbooks, which doesn't make much sense. That doesn't mean that nothing can be done. These textbooks are open and allow other textbooks to be made from them, so what could be done is telling colleges today that they will be mandated to use cc textbooks in classes 2 years after these textbooks are first published. This creates an incentive for variations on the textbooks to be made, gives teachers time to test out the materials and modify it if need be, and ensures that when the mandate comes into force: a) teachers can choose from different options of cc textbooks for each class b) no class is taught with a badly written though mandated textbook
- nathan_long 14y ago
  I'd suggest a series of deadlines for rising use: 10% of textbooks should be open by date X, 20% by date Y, etc. This would give time for early-adopting professors to try things out, for the textbook creators to iterate, and those who don't like the books to create their own if they prefer.
  - VSerge 14y ago
    That seems like a very sensible approach too. I think we agree that the main idea for implementation is a kind of progressive approach, and I'm sure there's plenty of experimentation on the topic to draw from and come up with a smart and efficient plan.
  - noahl 14y ago
    The distinction you make between "professors" and "textbook creators" seems strange to me here. At least two of the best textbooks I've seen were written by a professor who was teaching the class and wanted something different than the other books. I think this is the ideal way for them to be written. The idea of having separate "textbook companies" seems more like what happens in high school, and it produces pretty bad textbooks.
    - nathan_long 14y ago
      I agree. I was actually imagining that, say, the history department at some school would team up to write a textbook and publish it. What better way to build your department's reputation?
      - noahl 14y ago
        You're right; departments might do it for the prestige. And of course it might make their teaching easier to have a textbook customized to exactly how they teach the course (after the initial work of writing it).
Steuard 14y ago
Speaking as a professor, I'd be furious if some legislator told me exactly which textbook to use. I'm concerned about book prices, certainly, but mandating a specific text would immediately shut down the few attempts at innovation in textbooks or curriculum that do exist. If the new books are of comparable quality to the current market leaders in a given discipline (and especially if we eventually get some competition between free texts), then all that will be necessary will be an education campaign to make sure faculty know what's available. We do care about this stuff! (Or at least, a lot of us do.)
- brazzy 14y ago
  And some care about the kickbacks from forcing students to buy $150 textbooks that cannot be bought used because there's a new "edition" every year that shuffles the practice problems. That's what needs to be prevented in some way.
  - dhimes 14y ago
    Who's getting kickbacks? I've never gotten a kickback. I really want to know if you know of a kickback scam. The high prices could be due to just the opposite problem: professors are particularly difficult to sell to. They are individually picky about how their subject matter is presented, and textbook meetings (where we try to agree on the textbook among colleagues at a particular school) are frustrating and difficult. The time and effort expended in selling those books are (probably) enormous. There's no institutional path-to-sale. Decisions are made by the professors themselves, meaning it's close to b2c marketing of a b2b product. The problem, in business terms (stolen from a VC spiel to an entrepreneur group as to why they don't fund educational software) is that "the customer is dysfunctional."
    - steve19 14y ago
      Professors write textbooks and make their students buy them. Thats the scam. I remember vividly the pain during college of buying $150 textbooks that would be worth $30 the next year because a (n+1) edition would be released with a couple new pages just to mess up all the page references and exercises.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
My guess is that if state-funded open source CC-BY textbooks are known to exist, substantial social and administrative pressure can be brought to bear on anyone who does not use them. Fine if you don't think it's good enough, but you'd better be able to justify it. Also, once they exist, if they're CC, then they can be updated to include whatever "innovations" come along in other texts.
dorkrawk 14y ago
A bit of a tangent, but whenever I hear people complaining about greedy professors scamming students into buying their books I think about how much more money many of these highly educated people (particularly STEM people) could be making if they chose not to teach. Most people didn't become professors for the money. No, it's not good if educators price students out of education, no it's not simple to find funding for education, but we shouldn't expect our educators to be martyrs and then bemoan our declining global education rankings.
- Evbn 14y ago
  They became professors because they enjoy the freedom to self-direct their work and draw a full salary while working on a textbook.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
It is called breaking the problem apart into manageable pieces. As I recall the first time this came up the proposal was to give every 10 yr old (usually their 5th year of school) an e-book that each year would get copies of the textbooks loaded on to, the schools wouldn't need to buy text books and they would always have enough for the students. It got bogged down (as in tossed out) by the interconnections of various special interests both in the publishing industry and the education system. This is simpler, allow for the existence of a 'free' textbook. And we can work on making those text books as good as they can be, then allow schools to choose them or not, and then require schools use them once we've got evidence having those textbooks doesn't lower the test scores of students who only have the 'free' textbooks.
- zanny 14y ago
  I really think this is the proper stop-gap until we get rid of the traditional brick and mortar public schooling all together with something more Khan-esque. It doesn't hurt that the bottom in the tablet market is falling out, you can put something together that can easily read documents for $50 now.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    There was an observation made that the cost of an e-reader would cross below the cost of a single text book (I think the calculus math book is $60) and would replace all the books used by the student for 8 years. The math was pretty straight forward. EDIT: I just looked up Prentice Hall's high school texts on Amazon [1] and they range from a couple in the $45 dollar range but most clustering around $100. [1] http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=PRENTICE%20HALL&ie=UTF8&search-alias=books&sort=relevancerank http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&...

by gosub 14y ago

hermannj314 14y ago

Exactly. Directly from the bill "Nothing in this section shall be construed to mandate faculty use of any particular textbook or related materials." Western civilization, calculus, algebra, 19th century American literature. Yeah, you are going to need the up-to-date 30th-Anniversary collector's edition with never-before-read author's commentary and over 15 pages of deleted problem sets.

brador 14y ago
What if courses were required to show the total cost of the progam including the cost of mandatory textbooks? That way, at least the students know the full price of what they're in for.
- lotu 14y ago
  The thing is the cost of text-books can vary a lot. Very often you can get a used text book, or even a new one for cheaper than advertised by going online. Students can and do share textbooks. So publishing a total price is very impractical, and if you care that much the required texts are often listed next to the course for you to look up yourself.

VSerge 14y ago

At first glance it would seem only logical that the use of these textbooks be made mandatory. On the whole I agree, that this first step is necessary but insufficient, an that without teeth its effect will be much weaker. However, imposing at the state level one particular textbook per subject matter would be foolish - imagine just 10% of the textbooks are badly done and you have 5 classes out of 50 that would be required to be taught with poor textbooks, which doesn't make much sense. That doesn't mean that nothing can be done. These textbooks are open and allow other textbooks to be made from them, so what could be done is telling colleges today that they will be mandated to use cc textbooks in classes 2 years after these textbooks are first published. This creates an incentive for variations on the textbooks to be made, gives teachers time to test out the materials and modify it if need be, and ensures that when the mandate comes into force: a) teachers can choose from different options of cc textbooks for each class b) no class is taught with a badly written though mandated textbook

nathan_long 14y ago
I'd suggest a series of deadlines for rising use: 10% of textbooks should be open by date X, 20% by date Y, etc. This would give time for early-adopting professors to try things out, for the textbook creators to iterate, and those who don't like the books to create their own if they prefer.
- VSerge 14y ago
  That seems like a very sensible approach too. I think we agree that the main idea for implementation is a kind of progressive approach, and I'm sure there's plenty of experimentation on the topic to draw from and come up with a smart and efficient plan.
- noahl 14y ago
  The distinction you make between "professors" and "textbook creators" seems strange to me here. At least two of the best textbooks I've seen were written by a professor who was teaching the class and wanted something different than the other books. I think this is the ideal way for them to be written. The idea of having separate "textbook companies" seems more like what happens in high school, and it produces pretty bad textbooks.
  - nathan_long 14y ago
    I agree. I was actually imagining that, say, the history department at some school would team up to write a textbook and publish it. What better way to build your department's reputation?
    - noahl 14y ago
      You're right; departments might do it for the prestige. And of course it might make their teaching easier to have a textbook customized to exactly how they teach the course (after the initial work of writing it).

Steuard 14y ago

Speaking as a professor, I'd be furious if some legislator told me exactly which textbook to use. I'm concerned about book prices, certainly, but mandating a specific text would immediately shut down the few attempts at innovation in textbooks or curriculum that do exist. If the new books are of comparable quality to the current market leaders in a given discipline (and especially if we eventually get some competition between free texts), then all that will be necessary will be an education campaign to make sure faculty know what's available. We do care about this stuff! (Or at least, a lot of us do.)

brazzy 14y ago
And some care about the kickbacks from forcing students to buy $150 textbooks that cannot be bought used because there's a new "edition" every year that shuffles the practice problems. That's what needs to be prevented in some way.
- dhimes 14y ago
  Who's getting kickbacks? I've never gotten a kickback. I really want to know if you know of a kickback scam. The high prices could be due to just the opposite problem: professors are particularly difficult to sell to. They are individually picky about how their subject matter is presented, and textbook meetings (where we try to agree on the textbook among colleagues at a particular school) are frustrating and difficult. The time and effort expended in selling those books are (probably) enormous. There's no institutional path-to-sale. Decisions are made by the professors themselves, meaning it's close to b2c marketing of a b2b product. The problem, in business terms (stolen from a VC spiel to an entrepreneur group as to why they don't fund educational software) is that "the customer is dysfunctional."
  - steve19 14y ago
    Professors write textbooks and make their students buy them. Thats the scam. I remember vividly the pain during college of buying $150 textbooks that would be worth $30 the next year because a (n+1) edition would be released with a couple new pages just to mess up all the page references and exercises.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

My guess is that if state-funded open source CC-BY textbooks are known to exist, substantial social and administrative pressure can be brought to bear on anyone who does not use them. Fine if you don't think it's good enough, but you'd better be able to justify it. Also, once they exist, if they're CC, then they can be updated to include whatever "innovations" come along in other texts.

dorkrawk 14y ago

A bit of a tangent, but whenever I hear people complaining about greedy professors scamming students into buying their books I think about how much more money many of these highly educated people (particularly STEM people) could be making if they chose not to teach. Most people didn't become professors for the money. No, it's not good if educators price students out of education, no it's not simple to find funding for education, but we shouldn't expect our educators to be martyrs and then bemoan our declining global education rankings.

Evbn 14y ago
They became professors because they enjoy the freedom to self-direct their work and draw a full salary while working on a textbook.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

It is called breaking the problem apart into manageable pieces. As I recall the first time this came up the proposal was to give every 10 yr old (usually their 5th year of school) an e-book that each year would get copies of the textbooks loaded on to, the schools wouldn't need to buy text books and they would always have enough for the students. It got bogged down (as in tossed out) by the interconnections of various special interests both in the publishing industry and the education system. This is simpler, allow for the existence of a 'free' textbook. And we can work on making those text books as good as they can be, then allow schools to choose them or not, and then require schools use them once we've got evidence having those textbooks doesn't lower the test scores of students who only have the 'free' textbooks.

zanny 14y ago
I really think this is the proper stop-gap until we get rid of the traditional brick and mortar public schooling all together with something more Khan-esque. It doesn't hurt that the bottom in the tablet market is falling out, you can put something together that can easily read documents for $50 now.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  There was an observation made that the cost of an e-reader would cross below the cost of a single text book (I think the calculus math book is $60) and would replace all the books used by the student for 8 years. The math was pretty straight forward. EDIT: I just looked up Prentice Hall's high school texts on Amazon [1] and they range from a couple in the $45 dollar range but most clustering around $100. [1] http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=PRENTICE%20HALL&ie=UTF8&search-alias=books&sort=relevancerank http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&...