American Institute of Mathematics is a research non-profit ran by one of the Fry brothers (of Fry Electronics).
At least until recently, it's been run out of the back of the office space of their headquarters location on Brokaw road in San Jose.
Now that the store (and the company) is defunct, I'm happy to see that AIM is still kicking.
Can't vouch for everything that they do, but they have been running pretty solid geometric group theory workshops on the reg. I got to attend one, and have good memories of it.
I'm still sad that the store has shut down. They cite COVID as a reason, but they've been in liquidation mode long before that (at some point, I couldn't even get a USB flash drive there!). I hope that AIM will go on as a legacy.
As someone who's never studied real math (only Physics math), I found the book "Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications" extremely interesting, in part because it leads you to understand asymmetric cryptography and error-correcting codes. Also the SAGE exercises are neat.
I'm just a lowly adjunct, but I sense that one barrier to open textbook adoption is the accreditation process. I don't know exactly the connection, but I get the feeling that the department can check some box if they say that all their lower division calculus courses are taught with Pearson's book, for instance. Sort of a "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM" type situation.
Anyone have any insight to this? I only have a sample size of two... which leads me to believe not all departments worry about this so much.
One suggestion is "there should be established procedures for periodic review of the curriculum... should include careful scrutiny of course syllabi, prerequisites, and textbooks."
As much as I hate to say it, there are legitimate reasons for carefully controlling the curricula in lower division courses. A big one is: transfer credit. People get pissed when it's difficult to transfer their cheaper CC credits to a larger university.
The easiest way to solve these problems is by dictating curricula. But, unfortunately, the Pearson's of the world feast on the resulting homogenized market.
This is similar to my problem with Common Core. Everything in Common Core is perfectly reasonable. But now we have one giant textbook market where Pearson dominates with their products which now bear a "Common Core approved" label on the cover.
I expect it varies a lot from school, region, accrediting body, etc., but I worked for a school administration and taught as an adjunct for a spell and mostly the teachers themselves decided the books and were approved so long as the cost was reasonable and the books were easily available. A free textbook published independently would actually have more or less been automatically approved. it was a small school of a few hundred students focused on humanities. YMMV.
Schools buy Pearson because Pearson has strong marketing and is the biggest obvious choice, and because Pearson helps schols exploit their students by selling customized (not nationally standard!) hard-to-resell textbooks. Not the only well-developed choice.
> "Common Core approved"
This does not exist, so you have no problem with Common Core. Common Core is an open standard, not a certification. Any book can be Common Core aligned, and any school board can choose to certify a book within their jurisdiction.
Common Core is a standard (checklist of abilities students should learn), not a curriculum.
Ilustrated Mathematics ( https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/ ) is a curriculum, which is Common Core aligned, that fills in details of the standard. IM certified partners who each publish books. (Both open and proprietary partners exist) This is closest to the accredidation you mention.
Yes, accreditation is an expense. That expense can be paid by donations, grants, or government payments.
There are currently 3 textbook publishing partners of Illustrated Mathematics.
Cengage and McGraw-Hill are major textbook publishers, who are not Pearson.
Illustrative Mathematics's publishing partners are also not Pearson.
Illustrative Mathematics (used in various school districts) is based on Open Up Resources, a Creative Commons -licensed curriculum https://openupresources.org/math-curriculum/ that includes teacher/home/student lesson plans (not exactly a text book, but K-12 school curriculum is designed to be led by a teacher, not self-studied.)
College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.
It has been getting worse recently. Publishers are encouraging institutions to adopt programs that use dark patterns to force students to *rent* ebooks for the same price as purchasing textbooks new. The default release date for telling the student what book to buy is the first day of class, but reading and homework is assigned that same day. Unless you want to go in person to a book store and wait in a long line (or rent the ebook) you are going to be a week behind schedule waiting for a used book to ship from an independent marketplace.
More recently I was required to purchase an ebook that included online tests and homework hosted by the publisher. There is no 3rd party marketplace for that content. There is no way to get a refund if you do not use it. Publishers are allowing professors to outsource basically all of their lesson planning and content development responsibilities and pass the cost off to students. To add insult to injury, that product is setup to allow each institution to be the sole distributor of the license to their students and charge an additional markup to mail you a physical card containing the product activation code and offer no digital delivery option.
It's definitely not just the publishers. I think rackets like this work so effectively because bellies get buttered all the way down.
At one class at my university (an early chem class) the author of the book was also the professor of the course. And each year it was a new version which didn't do a whole lot more than fix some typos, introduce some new ones to be fixed next year, and change (probably automatically through software) the problem sets.
Then you'd be forced to buy new copies at full price from the campus book store. And at the end they'd then buy them back for you for a few dimes on the dollar so long as they were in "like-new" condition. And while I don't know what they did with them then I expect at that point they were sold to other universities at a discount for them to start the racket all over again with a set of now "like-new" text books.
Really nobody has any motivation whatsoever to change the system besides the student. Though even there most students seemed frustrated but simultaneously pretty apathetic. Everybody of course realized it was a racket, but didn't really care to make too much of a fuss over it since endless loans and the like all make it feel somehow like the money involved is not really real. And, after all, in a decade or two we'd all be millionaires.
When I was a kid, watching a movie on TV, it would pop up and say, "This movie has been edited for time, and for content, and to fit this screen," or whatever, and my dad would always jokingly mutter, "BASTARDS!"
So, my mom is in grad school, and in the second quarter of a class, and the professor announces, "I'm sorry, but there's a new version of the textbook, so you'll need to buy it," and my mom, without thinking at all, muttered, "BASTARDS!"
In slovenian (tech) colleges, years ago most of the books were written by professors, and published directly by in-college publishers, so calculated to current prices, books cost 10-20eur (literally depending on thickness and size), and were resold and reused for many years. Even photocopied versions were available at a few photocopied places around, due to a size difference (A4 book shrinked down to two A4 pages, side by side on one landscape A4 page), and noone cared, not even the authors.
Checking the situation now, some are even available online, eg:
Reminds me of Feynman's anecdote about how math textbooks were evaluated by the Curriculum Commission.
"The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for "sets") which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren't accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous – they weren't smart enough to understand what was meant by "rigor." They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn't understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child."
> Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.
So it's the schools that are in on it and the primary target to put blame on. My university (in eastern EU) had majority of textbooks available for free. We could print them ourselves, have them printed at school, or just buy used. I'm sure it wasn't the case for all curriculums, but probably for many. Writing textbooks is one of the things teachers (professors) do after all.
Well good news: they don't bring out new versions as often any more for most subjects.
Bad news: they are pushing hard for ebooks that are drm'ed to hell so you can't resell them. And if they do still have paper books, increasingly they are moving to "loose leaf" editions which are "cheaper" because they are just loose pages which means they are much more likely get damaged so you can't resell those either. Or if they do offer actual books, they do "rentals" which means you pay most of the price but have to return them and so you have zero chance of being able to resell them.
But that's ok, I'm sure your local bookstore can help you. Oh wait, most college bookstores are now owned by Barnes and Noble and so they are just another corporate business...
We have the same problem with high school (videregående skole) here in Norway. It should be possible for a child to use their older sibling's textbooks, especially for subjects like mathematics and physics, but very often the school requires a particular edition.
Ugh. As a non-American I have not heard a positive thing about American Education in any kind of media at all. There always seem to be a dozen problems with American colleges at all times yet so many flock there for higher education (mainly for Masters).
In the UK we (or at least I) never used the exercises from the text books - the lecturer sets their own questions and exercises.
So the exact page layout of the text books doesn't matter, and you can use any edition.
In general text books just seem to be less of a big deal in the UK. I remember reading all the classic text books, but the course didn't revolve around them. You could often pick which text books to read out of a selection.
Same thing is happening in my country. Is starts at primary school level. We used to have separated text and exercise books. Now the have up to three books for same math class and they have to write in at least in two of them.
I personally believe that public universities in the US should be incentivized if not outright required to use and contribute to open textbooks when possible.
In my experience undergraduate math textbooks are not like that at all. Perhaps for the introductory calculus sequence, but rarely for anything upper-division.
There are so many good textbooks for Algebra, Analysis, Topology and the most commonly taught ones are (Dummit&Foote, Rudin, Munkres) are nothing like what you describe.
i do not really understand, why students do not come together then and try to write, for example on wikibooks.org good comprehensive study material.
i mean after that, and when everybody looks on the project, that would be done? and at least that works for the entry level courses? why does nobody do that?
I think it's more secondary school textbooks which are the racket, as schools buy up the new versions of the textbooks when they come out without care for the prices. It depends on the course and subject but I find that professors often recommend books which aren't so difficult to get cheaply or second hand.
I think high prices for textbooks are fair (although compared to the field Pearson et al seem to have extortionate prices), they contain high-value knowledge. I think it's more ridiculous that universities don't provide students with textbook copies, given the incredible cost of degrees.
My dad used to be dept chair at the college where he worked. Because of his title, textbook publishers would send him copies of their books for consideration. He would give them to me and I would sell them on half.com.
He was also able to order the answer books for my calculus textbook. I could do all the practice problems and look up the answers (not just the odd # questions which were in the back of the student book). At the end of the semester, I gave the answer book to the chair of the math dept to keep in the student math lab.
Also, one day in my physics class, some textbook sales reps came to demo this new RF remote with numbered buttons like a TV remote. Each student in class would get one. Their sales pitch was that it would allow our teacher to put a daily quiz up on the projector screen, and each student would use the remote to submit their answer, and then his TA wouldn't have to grade 150 quizzes. Also it would track attendance (which I thought should be optional for college classes). Students were expected to pay for their own remote, and I think there was a license fee per semester. Yuck.
These remotes (iClicker) are in widespread use for large lecture hall classes at major universities. I don't know why they can't replace it with an app or something, but supposedly the point is that they work as an attendance measure because they only work when you're physically in class.
They're about $30 used and there's a large supply of them because you don't use them in higher level classes. IMO not the worst scam in academia compared to $200 book and homework combos
Omg, we had the remotes too and they often broke or stopped working and we had to get them replaced via the company that was contracted. Eventually, my teachers stopped using them because they were more trouble than they were worth.
I worked for a higher-ed startup that was heavily involved in the textbook space for a little over 5 years. There are a myriad of factors that contribute to the high price of textbooks. Some of those factors are:
• The principle / agent problem - Instructors naturally select the course materials for their own courses but typically never need to pay for their own instructor copies. In essence instructors are making decisions for which they generally bear no cost, but which do impact costs for students. Compounding this problem is that, surprisingly often, instructors did not actually know the cost of the materials they selected.
• The cost structure problem - Instructors will sometimes select a textbook to use for a course for only a year, but often they'll use a textbook for longer than a year. Using the same textbook for two to three years for a course isn't uncommon. This has implications re: how much revenue is at stake for a publisher for each textbook sale.
For example - if an instructor is teaching a particular course twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall), and they use the same textbook for 2 years in a row, and each course has roughly 30 students - then a publisher selling an instructor on a $200 textbook has a value of:
4 courses * 30 students * $200 = $24,000
Or, roughly the cost of some cars. With this kind of revenue on the line for each sale it makes sense for publishers to develop a nation-wide, high touch, hands on, sales force. And a friendly, knowledgeable sales person can be more persuasive during the course materials selection process than a worthy (but distant) affordable textbook initiative that doesn't have an in-person advocate.
• The content discovery problem - Part of the reason why publishers resort to sales teams is because they don't really have any good alternatives. There isn't a great platform for higher ed content discovery. Instructors who want to survey what content might be available for their course have a limited amount of time to make a decision, that decision has large consequences (their entire course might have to be redone for example), and there often isn't very good info about higher ed content (what are the learning outcomes associated with this content? what is the resale value of this content for the student? what do other instructors think about this content? etc.).
• The transient pain problem - Most students complete their college education in 4 - 6 years, which means that (for most) the pain of high textbook prices is temporary. In other words - the pain is temporary for the cohort that would probably be most motivated to solve the problem.
The discovery and cost structure problems are points a lot of people miss. Textbook publishers are selling professor time in the forms of content discovery, basic homework creation, and basic lesson planning.
One expansion on the principle agent problem: college bookstores handle. Many bookstores rent their land from the college with the agreed rent of $X +Y% of gross. This creates a disincentive for the institution to spend time negotiating with publishers (or ensuring faculty are getting enough use for the materials they assign).
Are there any major resources tracking all the open-source textbook type projects? I've seen some really cool stuff posted on HN like that Homopothy-Consistent Mathematics textbook.[0] AIoM's OTI seems cool, but is limited in scope and OpenStax mostly makes their own textbooks so it also ends up limited in capacity
Based off my shelf of old books, the price of a good, new, textbook has stayed roughly the same. The quality of the text and layout is much better now, but the paper is pretty much worse.
Some really boring old radar books I own, have the most beautiful silky paper that the equations practically glow, whereas now you get stuck with the toilet paper edition for not much less than what that old one would've cost.
I'm trying to get people interested in developing a model for an open, digital, printable, free textbook, that anyone could access online, download, in full or in part, share, or print if necessary.
The general idea is to create dematerialized textbooks, organized in modules: an officially approved minimum basis, and additional optional modules. Redundancy would be allowed for easy adaptation to local needs. Learning and teaching communities could also make contributions.
Bundles could then be customized or made available in presets. Schools could have their own official bundles, and students could get them in print in libraries, online, and the digital versions would, of course, have open formats.
The best example is that of a Math textbook, that allows for direct translation, and which main contents never get old.
So, for example, LaTeX modules would be made available online, and compiled into one document as needed. Indexes would, of course, need to me made universal in some way. And bundles would get their own UID, for easy sharing.
Today, the available digital textbooks are heavily copyrighted walled gardens, and their licenses expire after some time, so they're broken by design. But their contents are, for the most part, already Commons. So what gives?
When I started writing this comment, I had in mind that the Portuguese Ministry of Education had spent around 40 M€ buying textbooks from large publishers that are distributed for free to students in need, in a voucher system. While checking this, I found recent news reporting that this value, in the Portuguese national budget for 2019, had underestimated the cost by 100 M€ (and that year's budget had a surplus of 0,2% of the GDP...). I expect that an annual sum this large would be more than enough to fund a long term project.
In my view, this can be part of the solution. The biggest issue is an incentive issue with tenure.
[1] Professors are critically punished for poor research, mildly punished for poor teaching
[2] A base level of teaching acumen is required. Improving teaching at all is costly, so teachers are willing to pay up to the opportunity cost of lost research impact for course materials
[3] So they systematize and outsource necessary non-core components -- course content, course grading (via TAs and PhD candidates), and where permissible test and homework creation and evaluation. Since they have no real impact to them for the costs involved, such as purchase of texts, they proceed forward purchasing into the racket
How to fix? Make teaching reviews (student and outside observer) factors for keeping tenure. Don't include as part of tenure review beyond what is already there. This gives you the best of all worlds: world-class professors invested in quality teaching.
The issue with the textbook market is that the people that pick them (departments, professors) don't actually have to pay for it. If colleges were forced to subsidize even a small % of textbook costs, we'd see an order of magnitude reduction in prices.
[+] [-] romwell|4 years ago|reply
American Institute of Mathematics is a research non-profit ran by one of the Fry brothers (of Fry Electronics).
At least until recently, it's been run out of the back of the office space of their headquarters location on Brokaw road in San Jose.
Now that the store (and the company) is defunct, I'm happy to see that AIM is still kicking.
Can't vouch for everything that they do, but they have been running pretty solid geometric group theory workshops on the reg. I got to attend one, and have good memories of it.
I'm still sad that the store has shut down. They cite COVID as a reason, but they've been in liquidation mode long before that (at some point, I couldn't even get a USB flash drive there!). I hope that AIM will go on as a legacy.
[+] [-] eternauta3k|4 years ago|reply
http://abstract.ups.edu/aata/aata-toc.html
[+] [-] vmilner|4 years ago|reply
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/error-control
[+] [-] monkeybutton|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dunefox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d4rkp4ttern|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dls2016|4 years ago|reply
Anyone have any insight to this? I only have a sample size of two... which leads me to believe not all departments worry about this so much.
Edit: see these MAA guidelines: https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/professional-de...
One suggestion is "there should be established procedures for periodic review of the curriculum... should include careful scrutiny of course syllabi, prerequisites, and textbooks."
As much as I hate to say it, there are legitimate reasons for carefully controlling the curricula in lower division courses. A big one is: transfer credit. People get pissed when it's difficult to transfer their cheaper CC credits to a larger university.
The easiest way to solve these problems is by dictating curricula. But, unfortunately, the Pearson's of the world feast on the resulting homogenized market.
This is similar to my problem with Common Core. Everything in Common Core is perfectly reasonable. But now we have one giant textbook market where Pearson dominates with their products which now bear a "Common Core approved" label on the cover.
[+] [-] memco|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gowld|4 years ago|reply
> "Common Core approved"
This does not exist, so you have no problem with Common Core. Common Core is an open standard, not a certification. Any book can be Common Core aligned, and any school board can choose to certify a book within their jurisdiction.
Common Core is a standard (checklist of abilities students should learn), not a curriculum.
Ilustrated Mathematics ( https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/ ) is a curriculum, which is Common Core aligned, that fills in details of the standard. IM certified partners who each publish books. (Both open and proprietary partners exist) This is closest to the accredidation you mention.
Yes, accreditation is an expense. That expense can be paid by donations, grants, or government payments.
There are currently 3 textbook publishing partners of Illustrated Mathematics.
https://openupresources.org/frequently-asked-questions/open-...
Cengage and McGraw-Hill are major textbook publishers, who are not Pearson.
Illustrative Mathematics's publishing partners are also not Pearson.
Illustrative Mathematics (used in various school districts) is based on Open Up Resources, a Creative Commons -licensed curriculum https://openupresources.org/math-curriculum/ that includes teacher/home/student lesson plans (not exactly a text book, but K-12 school curriculum is designed to be led by a teacher, not self-studied.)
[+] [-] dzdt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deckar01|4 years ago|reply
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/07/inclusive-acc...
More recently I was required to purchase an ebook that included online tests and homework hosted by the publisher. There is no 3rd party marketplace for that content. There is no way to get a refund if you do not use it. Publishers are allowing professors to outsource basically all of their lesson planning and content development responsibilities and pass the cost off to students. To add insult to injury, that product is setup to allow each institution to be the sole distributor of the license to their students and charge an additional markup to mail you a physical card containing the product activation code and offer no digital delivery option.
https://www.oercommons.org/about
[+] [-] somenameforme|4 years ago|reply
At one class at my university (an early chem class) the author of the book was also the professor of the course. And each year it was a new version which didn't do a whole lot more than fix some typos, introduce some new ones to be fixed next year, and change (probably automatically through software) the problem sets.
Then you'd be forced to buy new copies at full price from the campus book store. And at the end they'd then buy them back for you for a few dimes on the dollar so long as they were in "like-new" condition. And while I don't know what they did with them then I expect at that point they were sold to other universities at a discount for them to start the racket all over again with a set of now "like-new" text books.
Really nobody has any motivation whatsoever to change the system besides the student. Though even there most students seemed frustrated but simultaneously pretty apathetic. Everybody of course realized it was a racket, but didn't really care to make too much of a fuss over it since endless loans and the like all make it feel somehow like the money involved is not really real. And, after all, in a decade or two we'd all be millionaires.
[+] [-] VikingCoder|4 years ago|reply
So, my mom is in grad school, and in the second quarter of a class, and the professor announces, "I'm sorry, but there's a new version of the textbook, so you'll need to buy it," and my mom, without thinking at all, muttered, "BASTARDS!"
Everyone turned in shock to stare at my mom.
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|4 years ago|reply
Checking the situation now, some are even available online, eg:
http://antena.fe.uni-lj.si/literatura/ed.pdf
Some are even unchanged from my times: https://www.fe.uni-lj.si/mma/Osnove_elektromagnetike_2016-02... (1999)
Basically, noone really cares.
[+] [-] viovanov|4 years ago|reply
"The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for "sets") which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren't accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous – they weren't smart enough to understand what was meant by "rigor." They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn't understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child."
[+] [-] rplnt|4 years ago|reply
So it's the schools that are in on it and the primary target to put blame on. My university (in eastern EU) had majority of textbooks available for free. We could print them ourselves, have them printed at school, or just buy used. I'm sure it wasn't the case for all curriculums, but probably for many. Writing textbooks is one of the things teachers (professors) do after all.
[+] [-] jccalhoun|4 years ago|reply
Bad news: they are pushing hard for ebooks that are drm'ed to hell so you can't resell them. And if they do still have paper books, increasingly they are moving to "loose leaf" editions which are "cheaper" because they are just loose pages which means they are much more likely get damaged so you can't resell those either. Or if they do offer actual books, they do "rentals" which means you pay most of the price but have to return them and so you have zero chance of being able to resell them.
But that's ok, I'm sure your local bookstore can help you. Oh wait, most college bookstores are now owned by Barnes and Noble and so they are just another corporate business...
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dartharva|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|4 years ago|reply
So the exact page layout of the text books doesn't matter, and you can use any edition.
In general text books just seem to be less of a big deal in the UK. I remember reading all the classic text books, but the course didn't revolve around them. You could often pick which text books to read out of a selection.
And you just get them from the library.
[+] [-] taubek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voxadam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordan_curve|4 years ago|reply
There are so many good textbooks for Algebra, Analysis, Topology and the most commonly taught ones are (Dummit&Foote, Rudin, Munkres) are nothing like what you describe.
[+] [-] deknos|4 years ago|reply
i mean after that, and when everybody looks on the project, that would be done? and at least that works for the entry level courses? why does nobody do that?
[+] [-] jcranberry|4 years ago|reply
I think high prices for textbooks are fair (although compared to the field Pearson et al seem to have extortionate prices), they contain high-value knowledge. I think it's more ridiculous that universities don't provide students with textbook copies, given the incredible cost of degrees.
[+] [-] DrBoring|4 years ago|reply
My dad used to be dept chair at the college where he worked. Because of his title, textbook publishers would send him copies of their books for consideration. He would give them to me and I would sell them on half.com.
He was also able to order the answer books for my calculus textbook. I could do all the practice problems and look up the answers (not just the odd # questions which were in the back of the student book). At the end of the semester, I gave the answer book to the chair of the math dept to keep in the student math lab.
Also, one day in my physics class, some textbook sales reps came to demo this new RF remote with numbered buttons like a TV remote. Each student in class would get one. Their sales pitch was that it would allow our teacher to put a daily quiz up on the projector screen, and each student would use the remote to submit their answer, and then his TA wouldn't have to grade 150 quizzes. Also it would track attendance (which I thought should be optional for college classes). Students were expected to pay for their own remote, and I think there was a license fee per semester. Yuck.
[+] [-] klondike_|4 years ago|reply
They're about $30 used and there's a large supply of them because you don't use them in higher level classes. IMO not the worst scam in academia compared to $200 book and homework combos
[+] [-] sugaroverflow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] when_creaks|4 years ago|reply
• The principle / agent problem - Instructors naturally select the course materials for their own courses but typically never need to pay for their own instructor copies. In essence instructors are making decisions for which they generally bear no cost, but which do impact costs for students. Compounding this problem is that, surprisingly often, instructors did not actually know the cost of the materials they selected.
• The cost structure problem - Instructors will sometimes select a textbook to use for a course for only a year, but often they'll use a textbook for longer than a year. Using the same textbook for two to three years for a course isn't uncommon. This has implications re: how much revenue is at stake for a publisher for each textbook sale.
For example - if an instructor is teaching a particular course twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall), and they use the same textbook for 2 years in a row, and each course has roughly 30 students - then a publisher selling an instructor on a $200 textbook has a value of:
4 courses * 30 students * $200 = $24,000
Or, roughly the cost of some cars. With this kind of revenue on the line for each sale it makes sense for publishers to develop a nation-wide, high touch, hands on, sales force. And a friendly, knowledgeable sales person can be more persuasive during the course materials selection process than a worthy (but distant) affordable textbook initiative that doesn't have an in-person advocate.
• The content discovery problem - Part of the reason why publishers resort to sales teams is because they don't really have any good alternatives. There isn't a great platform for higher ed content discovery. Instructors who want to survey what content might be available for their course have a limited amount of time to make a decision, that decision has large consequences (their entire course might have to be redone for example), and there often isn't very good info about higher ed content (what are the learning outcomes associated with this content? what is the resale value of this content for the student? what do other instructors think about this content? etc.).
• The transient pain problem - Most students complete their college education in 4 - 6 years, which means that (for most) the pain of high textbook prices is temporary. In other words - the pain is temporary for the cohort that would probably be most motivated to solve the problem.
[+] [-] perpetualpatzer|4 years ago|reply
One expansion on the principle agent problem: college bookstores handle. Many bookstores rent their land from the college with the agreed rent of $X +Y% of gross. This creates a disincentive for the institution to spend time negotiating with publishers (or ensuring faculty are getting enough use for the materials they assign).
[+] [-] therealmarv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] culi|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://kerodon.net/
[+] [-] mhh__|4 years ago|reply
Some really boring old radar books I own, have the most beautiful silky paper that the equations practically glow, whereas now you get stuck with the toilet paper edition for not much less than what that old one would've cost.
[+] [-] chicob|4 years ago|reply
I'm trying to get people interested in developing a model for an open, digital, printable, free textbook, that anyone could access online, download, in full or in part, share, or print if necessary.
The general idea is to create dematerialized textbooks, organized in modules: an officially approved minimum basis, and additional optional modules. Redundancy would be allowed for easy adaptation to local needs. Learning and teaching communities could also make contributions.
Bundles could then be customized or made available in presets. Schools could have their own official bundles, and students could get them in print in libraries, online, and the digital versions would, of course, have open formats.
The best example is that of a Math textbook, that allows for direct translation, and which main contents never get old.
So, for example, LaTeX modules would be made available online, and compiled into one document as needed. Indexes would, of course, need to me made universal in some way. And bundles would get their own UID, for easy sharing.
Today, the available digital textbooks are heavily copyrighted walled gardens, and their licenses expire after some time, so they're broken by design. But their contents are, for the most part, already Commons. So what gives?
When I started writing this comment, I had in mind that the Portuguese Ministry of Education had spent around 40 M€ buying textbooks from large publishers that are distributed for free to students in need, in a voucher system. While checking this, I found recent news reporting that this value, in the Portuguese national budget for 2019, had underestimated the cost by 100 M€ (and that year's budget had a surplus of 0,2% of the GDP...). I expect that an annual sum this large would be more than enough to fund a long term project.
[+] [-] tomrod|4 years ago|reply
[1] Professors are critically punished for poor research, mildly punished for poor teaching
[2] A base level of teaching acumen is required. Improving teaching at all is costly, so teachers are willing to pay up to the opportunity cost of lost research impact for course materials
[3] So they systematize and outsource necessary non-core components -- course content, course grading (via TAs and PhD candidates), and where permissible test and homework creation and evaluation. Since they have no real impact to them for the costs involved, such as purchase of texts, they proceed forward purchasing into the racket
How to fix? Make teaching reviews (student and outside observer) factors for keeping tenure. Don't include as part of tenure review beyond what is already there. This gives you the best of all worlds: world-class professors invested in quality teaching.
[+] [-] averagedev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snicker7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thecleaner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jp0d|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|4 years ago|reply
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