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Textbooks must die
- waratuman 17y agoI love my textbooks, it will be sad to see them go if they do. I've always preferred paper to pdf.
- omouse 17y agoThe reason you prefer paper over PDF is because PDF merely imitates paper.
- sketerpot 17y agoI prefer hypertext over both of them, especially now that we all have tabbed browsers. There's a reason why people will voluntarily spend hours learning things from Wikipedia. http://xkcd.com/214/ http://xkcd.com/214/
- Locke1689 17y agoI prefer PDF to paper. The Intel IA32 Architecture Volumes would be god-awful in paper form.
- sqs 17y agoWhy don't more young professors release free textbooks online as a way of raising their profile in the field? Seems to me that should be a great way to advance on the tenure track, but is it actually? Certainly it's not the same as publishing original research, but it ought to at least help out in showing an interest in pedagogy.
- neilc 17y agoPublishing a full textbook would probably take too much time away from focusing on research, which is the real currency you need to make your tenure case on. Online publication of a cleaned-up course notes and the like would probably make sense, though.
- JimmyL 17y agoIt takes a hell of a lot of effort to release a textbook - time to (conceptually) design it, write it, edit it, have other professors edit it, etc. In the time it takes to do that, they could have banged out a few interesting papers to present at a conference. As for advancing in tenure-track, I doubt it. As illogical as it is, tenure-track positioning is generally related to research skill, as opposed to pedagogical interest and/or ability. Most large universities would prefer to have great researchers (who publish works with the schools' name on them) who teach as needed and without passion, as opposed to the other way around.
- alexjmann 17y agoI had a similar conversation with the Dean of my business school the past semester, basically telling him that physical textbooks lagged the available technology. He didn't want to hear it because "the number one seller of textbooks on campus WAS the university."
- azanar 17y ago"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" It seems your Dean would've been good friends with Upton Sinclair. Although, it does raise what I think is an interesting question. It has been said on here a lot that markets tend to see monopolies as market damage, and route around them; this isn't quite that severe, but seems to be a vertical monopoly to a certain degree. How would one route around this? The obvious option would be "go to school somewhere else," but this seems endemic in academia as a whole.
- johnnybgoode 17y agothis seems endemic in academia as a whole Yes, because this is not even close to a free market. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658165 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658165
- russell 17y agoSeth is right on. Textbooks should be gone within ten years, especially the college introductory and public school pablum. I expect there will be some resistance. Textbooks probably count for a lot in the publish or perish race and they bring a nice side income. But decades ago other professors were putting together xeroxed collections of articles. Students are demanding some relief. I cant see anything but the trend snowballing. I cant help but wonder if the demise of textbooks will lead to other significant revolutions. I remember sweating through problem after problem in calculus so I could do problem after problem on the tests. Wouldnt it be better to give the students Mathematica or similar software? It could do the work, while giving them a tool to get a deeper understanding of the underlying problem.
- socratees 17y agoIf textbooks become a thing of the past, every student will carry a netbook / tablet (which runs educational software, browsers etc) to school.
- caffeine 17y agoWouldn't it be better to give the students Mathematica or similar software? It could do the work [...] This is really a tough one. My opinion is no - the sweat is the learning. Skipping the problems would just lead to knowing a lot about math, without actually knowing any math. On the other hand, it's tempting - and in the Real World (tm), people do just plug their giant, buck-nasty equations into Mathematica and avoid doing all the book-keeping. I guess the question is: should pilots all just train on auto-pilot, while having only a conceptual understanding of what piloting is about? Or should they learn to pilot manually first, and then use the auto-pilot judiciously? There are legitimate points going both ways - but I vote for the 2nd.
- azanar 17y agoBut decades ago other professors were putting together xeroxed collections of articles. Cohesion is a problem with xeroxed articles. Not to say it isn't with most textbooks, but it can be one of their primary goals, whereas the primary goal of an article is to disseminate a set of ideas in as efficient a way as possible, with some assumptions about prior knowledge of the reader. I remember sweating through problem after problem in calculus so I could do problem after problem on the tests. So did I. Part of internalizing the fundamentals of a subject is working through exercises that depend on those fundamentals. You don't get that when something else is doing the work for you. Learning isn't easy, and we need to get over the desire to want to make it so.
- lowe 17y agocombine these points with public high school budget cuts and it just gets worse. i still remember how demotivating it was being handed a heavy chemistry textbook from three decades ago on the first day of my junior year. the first 5 minutes alone flipping through those pages was probably what killed all interest in science for 19/20 in that class...i mean the authors were out of touch with teenagers even back in the 70s. so my biggest problem with textbooks has been their age: that has been the most significant in making a subject seem static and dead. i've had CS and foreign language profs who used their own course notes updated yearly, and i ended up relying on these more than any prescribed textbook. the freshness made a big difference. the profs were also more invested in the material because they either wrote it themselves, or at least took the time to assemble. as such they were clued in to the contents and focused on them in lecture. a batch of notes also has less perceived authority than a textbook, which i think is a good thing, as it encourages questions and challenges.
- zck 17y agoIt always is nice when a professor takes the time to put together a course packet, but sometimes it can be frustrating when you don't understand something in class, and go to the course packet to find it explained the same way.
- sketerpot 17y agoInternet to the rescue! Steal somebody else's course packet and direct your students to it. Maybe have a couple of course packets. Variety helps, and students these days are (or should be) good at ignoring vast amounts of irrelevant material.
- stavrianos 17y agoI've come across a handful of textbooks good enough to keep. It's rare, though. First year university, made the mistake of buying all my texts- first years, don't do this! Now, I ask around one year up, see if the books are worth anything at all. If they are it's easy enough to borrow one from someone else how bought it. At the end of the year, if it was actually exceptional, I'll return the borrowed and buy my own copy.
- tokenadult 17y ago"A textbook author in Toronto made enough money from his calculus textbook to afford a $20 million house." I know that calculus textbook. http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Early-Transcendentals-James-Stewart/dp/0495554650/ http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Early-Transcendentals-James-S... It's workmanlike, but certainly not inspiring like Spivak's textbook. http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/ http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/
- Rod 17y agoSeth Godin is a 2nd class thinker. His shallowness and vagueness impress only the gullible. When will people stop listening to him as if he were a god??
- Confusion 17y agoRod is a 2nd class thinker. His shallow and vague comments impress only the gullible. Why would anyone listen to him? To refrain from committing the same sin, let me explain that Rod's comment does not show why this blogposting by Godin is 'shallow' or 'vague' and uses the fallacy of 'poisoning the well', by connotating 'listenening to him' with 'acting as if he is a God', leaving no room for someone to say: well, this article is pretty decent, but on the whole I think Godin adds little worth reading.
- Rod 17y agoExamples of 1st class thinkers: Knuth, Sussman, Papadimitriou, Tardos, Vazirani, etc. I admire Jobs for his sense of style. I admire Gates for his business acumen. I used to like reading Seth Godin. He makes some valid points. However, anyone with a functioning brain is capable of arriving at the same conclusions he does. He does not go into depth because there's no depth to go into. His posts are sweet and fluffy but have zero nutritious value. It's a bunch of truisms that add little to anyone's knowledge.
- anigbrowl 17y agoI'm not a fan of Seth Godin either, and my first instinct was to comment that 'Godin linkbait must die'. But I do agree with his points, although as usual the analysis is shallow. Something that deserves more attention is the fact that the textbook industry in the US runs like a cartel (as alluded to above, with professors requiring a particular book for which they get free copies, and the proceeds from which help to pay their salaries). In Europe I preferred buying college textbooks to learn programming, because they were cheaper and better value than the commercial offerings, without the fancy graphic design covers and marketing outreach.
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- TweedHeads 17y agoThere is a textbook maffia that will put some resistance. Specially those who make a fortune every year with the same scam of changing a word or two in a book and selling it (forcing it on students) as a new updated edition. Resistance is futile.
- credo 17y ago>>"A textbook author in Toronto made enough money from his calculus textbook to afford a $20 million house." Let us see, many movie stars, many wall street bankers, many atheletes, many businessmen etc. make far bigger amounts of money. ...and Seth Godin has a problem with the author of one testbook making money
- martey 17y agoExcept that it is difficult to take a class without buying the textbook, and they are expensive. When was the the last time your professor mandated that you see a certain sports team play, but base tickets cost $100?
- azanar 17y agoThe base tickets are far more than $100. You also need to factor in the cost of tuition, transportation to and from, and the opportunity cost of having classes take up your time. Or, to put in another way, you are not mandated to attend a class where the professor will charge you to see a certain sports team play. Somewhere along the way, you made a choice that brought you to this mandate.
- nopassrecover 17y agoFor a site promoting entreprenuers and innovation the attitude towards this textbook writer seems odd. At least he's contributing something to society to earn his wealth..
- credo 17y agoIf my professor had mandated that I see a certain sports team play, I probably wouldn't have taken the class. As a free-market type would say or as Stephen Covey would say, take responsibility for your decisions. If you don't like the mandates that come with a certain class, don't take that class.
- sofal 17y agoImagine this purely hypothetical situation for a minute: some classes are actually required for your major, and even though you are having exorbitant textbook prices extorted from you, it's still not enough to warrant quitting the major entirely. Just because people can technically choose to avoid the situation entirely by dropping out or altering their life's course by switching majors doesn't justify ripping students off, or any other such small evils.
- Confusion 17y agoThe problem is the lack of an open market. Amazon has provided more transparancy through reviews, but there still is no freedom of choice for the consumers when a textbook is assigned. There is virtually no competition on price possible. Moreover, you can't just choose another textbook, as the topics that are covered may differ slightly. Even in math, when you use another Calculus book, there is a reasonable chance you miss out on some stuff, that just happens to be on the exam. I'm not sure Seth's solution will work and I would rather propose that teachers should be clearer on what kind of problems the student should be able to answer/solve, while keeping in mind that the student should be able to use any in a range of at least six books to study the material.
- JimmyL 17y agoThe presence of "freedom of choice" for the consumer depends on how you look at the industry. From a student's perspective, there is no real choice - you use the textbook you're assigned. Some professors will offer a few alternatives, but unless they're very diligent about always giving references to each book (and I had a few professors who did this well), the students who use the number-one book - the one the professor uses when he's lecturing and doing examples - will generally have a better idea of the material and the standard they'll be evaluated on. From the professor's point of view (considering them as the consumer), however, there's quite a free market. They can get free evaluation copies of any textbook they want, and most schools give individual professors the choice of what book they use for a given class. So the problem then becomes getting professors to switch textbooks, which is tough. Most professors - especially in things like science - will teach the same courses year-on, and will become very comfortable with the material in a given book. They'll know what to skip, what to supplement, and what to offer additional comments on.
- ig1 17y agoThis post just seems tacky, complaining that because marketing textbooks don't mention his own concept of "permission marketing" that they're out of date. Also complaining that Stewart making 20 million for text book is unreasonable, when he himself has made a substantial amount of money from writing educational books. Not to mention the 30 million he got for his games site Yoyodyne. Obviously that was completely reasonable.
- anigbrowl 17y agoTrue, but not referencing Google? I think a marketing 101 text probably needs to say something about the importance of having your website be discoverable in an internet search, or at the very least review how the commoditization of online advertising has led to a shift in the landscape.
- ori_b 17y agoOr maybe the textbook could focus on the important theory that needs to be covered, and leave keeping up to date with the newest fads up to the students and the professor teaching the course? The theory is what gives the textbooks value. It's the timeless and constantly useful material that makes a textbook worth referring to decades later.
- froo 17y agoSeth is usually a bit hit and miss, some things he says are interesting, other's are just not. This post is the latter - yes it's a rant, but it's completely way off base. If he doesn't like the current textbooks, like any good entrepreneur, he should write his own. This particular line I found hypocritical. Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online. In my window, that particular line is being rendered just above where the adverts for his books are on the left. Yes, people should give away their work for free... I mean, you're doing it, aren't you Seth? Hypocrite.
- hexis 17y agoHow much did you pay to read the blog post?
- froo 17y agoHow much did you pay to read the blog post? Ok, well seeing as you're trying to be a smartass, let me answer you. Using rough calculations... I use my internet for about 6 hours a day x 30 days a month so I get approximately 180 hours of internet usage a month or 10800 minutes. Since that blog post took me about 2 minutes to read and I pay $170 a month for my internet access (which includes telephone line rental), then I guess it cost me about 2 cents to read that blog post. So his 2 cents, cost me 2 cents. Now we've gotten semantics out of the way, let me answer you properly. Seth uses his blog as a marketing tool to both sell his books and to promote his "Seth Godin" brand which helps him get his consulting and workshop gigs too. So yes, he might give away snippets of information on his blog, but make no mistake, he doesn't do it free - he has other outcomes in mind.
- GHFigs 17y agohe doesn't do it free - he has other outcomes in mind How is this hypocritical, though? Anybody publishing anything for free has access to these benefits.
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- Maro 17y agoHere in eastern Europe, university is somewhat different then in the anglo-saxon world. We don't have homework problems (homeworks are never part of the final grade), and exams at the end of the semester are usually oral where the student has to prove theorems/algorithms or in general present some kind of theoretical framework. There is usually a problem-solving exam mid-year, but it only makes up 0-25% of the grade. It's usually managable to pass the problem-solving exam, the real Suck is the oral examination at the end when you're face-to-face with the professor. As a result of this skew toward the theoretical side, our textbooks are light on problems and practicalities and full of theories, proofs, derivations, etc. (Even a Calculus 101 textbook.) They look more like upper-level textbooks in the anglo-saxon world. As a result, these "textbooks" are usually kept around for later reference. This is currently changing with the introduction of the so-called 'Bologna process', which basically transforms our systems to more closely match the anglo-saxon world for compatibility reasons. Eg. before we only had 5 year MSc degrees, now we introduced the 3+2 Bsc/Msc system, which is a Good Thing. Just because a (text)book is kept around for later reference doesn't mean it should be printed, as an electronic version is actually more searchable. The main obstacle is the 'reading off an LCD screen sucks sitting at the desk' issue, which once solved with a good DRM-free paper-like device will do to the Book Industry what MP3 has done to the Music Industry. Already you can torrent almost any book, even ones that only interest a handful of people in the world, such as research-level physics books (example from my field: search for 'darksiderg cosmology'). The fact that these highly specialized books are torrented a few months after their publication date is pretty puzzling to me =) But I don't complain, as I can preview before I buy (we don't have bookstores selling english-language books, so checking them out at the bookstore is not an option). But once people can copy these to a book-like device, publishers will have to look for another revenue stream. Fortunately, with research-level books, the answer in theory at least is pretty simple: just cut out the publisher, researchers already generate print-ready Latex files anyways. In reality it will be a long struggle; a good use-case is research journals where the publisher is completely unnecessary but is still holding on, researchers are still signing over publication rights of their papers to companies like Springer.
- Raphael 17y agoEliminate copyright laws and books should soon become available at about cost.
- Raphael 17y agoIs this inaccurate?
- htsh 17y agoWhy would this be inaccurate? If there were no copyright laws, anyone could print a popular textbook and hence the market would drive the price down to just above the cost of printing it. What's unlikely is that we'll eliminate copyright laws.
- nova 17y agoThe old 14 year limit was a good balance, specially if updated to only cover commercial distribution.
- gamble 17y ago>> "Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online." Some of the worst classes I had as an undergrad were the ones taught with a professor's class notes instead of a proper text. It's true that texts are overly expensive, but the amount of work that goes into a good text isn't trivial. I'd recommend to anyone that if they don't like the text their class is using, find another one and just photocopy the problem sets from the library's copy if you need them. There's an excellent text available for almost every subject, if you look for it.
- Avshalom 17y ago>> "Some of the worst classes I had as an undergrad were the ones taught with a professor's class notes instead of a proper text. It's true that texts are overly expensive, but the amount of work that goes into a good text isn't trivial." For two reasons at least. One: the amount of effort that goes into a good text and Two it means that every one taking the class from a different teacher is either getting taught something different or being taught from some one else's notes. Same with anytime a new teacher takes over the subject. A couple years of this and suddlenly people are being taught with error ridden cryptic notes from a teacher who retired years ago but the course material is now so different than the text book that upper level classes relying on what you learned from the teachers notes would need to be restructured so you can change the low level course. which is exactly what happened at my school, NMT, with the sophomore level physics courses and it's been a 4 year head ache so far. All of which to say is that the text book industry sucks, not necessarily the text books themselves.
- htsh 17y agoI just wanted to say that this price-gouging is most egregious in the legal world, where the textbooks are full of case-law that is legally required to be freely available. The prof's add their notes at the end of each case and then sell the book for $200. They could simply give you a link to cases & a little pamphlet with their notes. What bothers me most about this whole setup is it makes a legal education even more expensive than it already is for lower to mid-income students.
- hs 17y agomy junior+senior high school lent me old books so students didn't have to buy new inferior books we had to summarize the books because at the end of the year, they are returned. the next year, we continued with our notes and loaned old books for the level and no, it's not a poverty-stricken school. in fact it's the best in the nation (out of tens of thousands), producing dozens of ministers, governor, entrepreneurs, artists, etc bad textbooks must die, good classics must live
- johnnybgoode 17y agoThe real problem here is that the textbook industry is being propped up by the government, and I'm not just talking about copyright laws. People are placed at a serious disadvantage if they don't go to a government-approved university and get a degree. To do this, they have to take certain classes. To take those classes, they have to buy certain textbooks. If people could learn however they wanted without being at a legal disadvantage, even if that just means attending a truly private university, the textbook extortion scheme would be competed away. Why would you tolerate $200 textbooks if you didn't have to get your hands on that legal credential, which can only be offered by certain institutions?
- FrankBlack 17y agoAccording to the notes from a hearing held in February 2008, the average cost for textbooks in the State University of New York system (SUNY) is $900 per year. If we are conservative and say that $300 of those $900 dollars are for things that cannot be easily replaced (lab books, workbooks, CDs, unique books, etc.) that still amounts to $2400 over the course of four years that could be saved if the text books were made Open Source. For that price the student could buy a laptop capable of everything they'd need over four years at school (a Macbook with bumped up memory and Apple Care protection plan is around $1200 after the student discount, Dell would likely be less for a comparable configuration) and a Kindle and still have money left over for beer. Link to SUNY Investigation: http://www.suny.edu/files/sunynewsfiles/txt/TextbooksTestimony.txt http://www.suny.edu/files/sunynewsfiles/txt/TextbooksTestimo...