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Universities could give professors a paid year off At whose expense? Taxpayers and the students themselves, of course. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
by maxharris 14y ago
Universities could give professors a paid year off
At whose expense? Taxpayers and the students themselves, of course. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
On top of that, there is no sense going against the specialization of labor. Better leave the professionals (in this case, the publishing companies) to do their thing.
- betterunix 14y agoSo for a small increase in their tuition, students would be getting free textbooks, or for a small increase in taxes (or just not spending so much on the military), society would be getting free textbooks. In what version of the universe are these negative things? As for the "professionals" at the publishing companies, what exactly is their profession? We do not need publishers to copy books for us anyone, because we have computers that can copy the books faster, cheaper, and on a much greater scale and if students need printers, they have access to them. So what professionals would you be referring to? Textbook publishing companies are not academies where experts in a subject spend their days writing about that subject; universities are the academies where experts (i.e. professors and researchers) are paid to write about their area of expertise. Textbook publishing companies hire people who can make fancy covers (which adds no value to books), double check typesetting (which is a redundant task, since librarians and professors can do that), and operate machines that print and bind books (but we do not need that anymore, because we have automated ways to distribute books). So in what way are we "going against the specialization of labor" by asking for books that are CC-SA licensed, written by professors, and shared over the Internet?