In 2011, [Ariel Diaz] started Boundless Learning, a Boston company that has begun giving away free electronic textbooks covering college subjects like American history, anatomy and physiology, economics, and psychology.
What's controversial is how Boundless creates these texts. The company trawls for public material on sites like Wikipedia and then crafts it into online books whose chapters track closely to those of top-selling college titles. In April, Boundless was sued by several large publishers who accused the startup of engaging in "the business model of theft."
Theft or not, the college textbook industry is ripe for a disruptive shock from the Internet. Publishers today operate using what Mark Perry, a professor at the University of Michigan, calls a "cartel-style" model: students are required to buy specific texts at high prices. Perry has calculated that prices for textbooks have been rising at three times the rate of inflation since the 1980s.
On average, college students spend around $1,200 each year on books and supplies. Those costs, which sometimes exceed the tuition at a community college, are prompting a wider rebellion against commercial publishers. In February, California legislators passed a law directing the state to produce free versions of texts used in the state's 50 most popular college courses. In October, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said printed textbooks, a $6 billion industry in the United States (when sales of both used and new books are tallied), should be made "obsolete."
I was pretty good at finding workarounds in school. Most professors said (when I asked) that older versions of the textbook were ok; foriegn versions of textbooks are often available at abebooks; a lot of books are just collections of articles that are available online via the library subscription; books could be found at the library if you started looking early; and there was always the copier at work.
"Liberalism is arbitrarily selective in its choice of whose dignity to champion." Adrian Vermeule
I place 3-4 copies of a textbook in the library for students to check out.
In recent years, however, I have gone away from using text books and simply use photocopied materials bound together.
Old versions are fine - in a recent book I used, they changed the cover and a few pictures and nothing else. Even page numbers corresponded.
Publishers like Cambridge release books for $3-15 in Asia that they charge $50+ for in the UK and US. Usually the quality of the paper is slightly inferior (though required for more humid climates).
WildGorillaMan wrote:Enthusiasm combined with no skill whatsoever can sometimes carry the day.
I recently went through this when I got my MS and I will tell you the textbook industry is a racket.
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy.
It is our job to see that it stays there." - George Orwell
Fat Cat wrote:I recently went through this when I got my MS and I will tell you the textbook industry is a racket.
This is the truth, and most electronic texts that are out now are part of the racket. Buying the old version of the text is the way to go, as long as you don't buy from the campus store.
"The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all."
I didn't buy any textbooks in graduate school either. The professors either photocopied the chapters they taught or I used my textbooks from college. And, everything was covered in lecture anyway.
Miss Piggy wrote:Never eat more than you can lift.
Terry B. wrote:In recent years, however, I have gone away from using text books and simply use photocopied materials bound together.
Publishers like Cambridge release books for $3-15 in Asia that they charge $50+ for in the UK and US. Usually the quality of the paper is slightly inferior (though required for more humid climates).
Depending on how much you photocopy, it may not fall under "fair use" law or whatever. Whoever is doing the copying, whether it's yourself or your dept. or your college's library could get slammed with a lawsuit if it's bad enough.
I have several friends who've pirated all of their textbooks onto a Kindle Fire or iPad. E-ink readers are better (for me) but more complicated, the Fire or iPad will display PDFs just fine.
I found that adjunct professors and those unsure of whether or not they'd make tenure were the least likely to make it easy or cheap for students. The more senior ones knew how to work the system better, unless they'd written one of the book of coarse.
IMO the biggest ripoff was stuff from CQ Press-- most of it is available online for free with college ID via the library.
"Liberalism is arbitrarily selective in its choice of whose dignity to champion." Adrian Vermeule
Terry B. wrote:In recent years, however, I have gone away from using text books and simply use photocopied materials bound together.
Depending on how much you photocopy, it may not fall under "fair use" law or whatever. Whoever is doing the copying, whether it's yourself or your dept. or your college's library could get slammed with a lawsuit if it's bad enough.
I developed the materials.
WildGorillaMan wrote:Enthusiasm combined with no skill whatsoever can sometimes carry the day.
Terry B. wrote:In recent years, however, I have gone away from using text books and simply use photocopied materials bound together.
Depending on how much you photocopy, it may not fall under "fair use" law or whatever. Whoever is doing the copying, whether it's yourself or your dept. or your college's library could get slammed with a lawsuit if it's bad enough.
When I had to take my candidacy exams, I'd actually not had a direct course in any of the topics, due to my grad major being different from the undergrad. So I got copies of the 4 textbooks that the exams were roughly built around, and most importantly I got copies of the solution manuals too. And then I ground through all 4 books, essentially doing every problem in the books. I'd actually do them at first, using the solution manuals to check aftwerward. Then I just got to where'd I study the problem, come up with the solution approach, and then check the solution manual to see if I had it right.
It was an extraordinarily eye-opening experience. I learned those 4 subjects better than I'd learned any other in all my years. No substitute for just doing the reps until the stuff is internalized.
Of course, these were engineering courses, so they lent themselves to grinding it out. Worked for statistics too.
nafod wrote:When I had to take my candidacy exams, I'd actually not had a direct course in any of the topics, due to my grad major being different from the undergrad. So I got copies of the 4 textbooks that the exams were roughly built around, and most importantly I got copies of the solution manuals too. And then I ground through all 4 books, essentially doing every problem in the books. I'd actually do them at first, using the solution manuals to check aftwerward. Then I just got to where'd I study the problem, come up with the solution approach, and then check the solution manual to see if I had it right.
It was an extraordinarily eye-opening experience. I learned those 4 subjects better than I'd learned any other in all my years. No substitute for just doing the reps until the stuff is internalized.
Of course, these were engineering courses, so they lent themselves to grinding it out. Worked for statistics too.
