Posted on 04/26/2008 8:36:08 AM PDT by iowamark
College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s, mainly because of marginally useful CD-ROMs and other supplements. A bill pending in Congress would require publishers to sell “unbundled” versions of the books — minus the pricey add-ons. Even more important, it would require publishers to reveal book prices in marketing material so that professors could choose less-expensive titles.
The bill is a good first step. But colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway costs. That means using digital textbooks, which can often be presented online free of charge or in hard copies for as little as one-fifth the cost of traditional books. The digital books can also be easily customized and updated.
Right now, textbook publishers are calling the tune....
But there is no reason for an introductory textbook to carry a price tag of, say, $140, in an area like economics where the information changes little from year to year.
... A new company called Flat World Knowledge, based in Nyack, N.Y., plans to offer online textbooks free and hopes to make its profit by selling supplemental materials like study guides and hard copies printed on demand. A study being carried out by the geographer Ronald Dorn at Arizona State University suggests that students who use free online textbooks perform as well academically as students who buy expensive copies from traditional publishers. Colleges and universities should take advantage of these new developments. Cash-strapped students and their families need all the relief they can get.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I should have read before posting #28!
In my day, textbooks cost about $150 per academic quarter in undergraduate classes, but of course far more when I got to graduate school and started buying medical books. The advantage of investing in those medical texts is that some of them remain on my bookshelf and are used, lo, these many years later.
Recently my daughter has been spending $800 per semester, and that was a reduced number since she bought used books on Amazon. And as someone else remarked, she rarely used the texts. The relevant material for the course was always in lectures and online.
My sister works at DePaul and they are working with the professors to put their lectures on the IPODU website.
Why is it that the liberals, particularly the liberals in academia, are quick to condemn the oil companies for “profiteering”, but say nothing at all about the outrageous prices that students are being charged for textbooks?
How true. I doubt that introductory calculus has changed since Isaac Newton, yet the textbooks are “revised” constantly.
The book for Human Anatomy $186.75, Human Physiology $178.50, Microbiology $144.20, Microbiology Laboratory Theory and Application, 2nd Edition used $29.95, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition used $27.50.
The professors at the school choose which textbooks they will use. The professor of Microbiology is an arrogant know-it-all SOB. He chose a new addition and refused to let the students use a used book or an addition that was two years old.
The cost of getting an education is out of the world.
When I was going for my masters the cost was $27.00 per semester hour and books were priced new in the $20.00 range.
Yep, school cost are a scam and getting worse by the day.
These schools of higher learning are sticking to the student, mom an Dad.
My books in college in the 90s cost $60 to $100 new. I bought used when I could, but I hated getting a book that had been highlighted already. What really made me mad was when they would buy them back at the end of the year for $15 and then resell them the next year for $40. I never sold back a book because of that.
You get way more education value out of those $500 books than the $20,000 you pay for a semester at a private college.
Why would anyone want a paperback edition of machinery’s handbook?
Mine fits in my toolbox, a hardcover wouldn’t
Jack
Shoot! ................. That's just a small part of the Gigantic Education Scam. It is so big that there is no way that the government nor the media will dig into it. If someone dares to they will be vilified and run out of town, just look at what's happening to Ben Stein right now for just taking a small peak at education corruption. Many here at FReepers are even joining in on the attack because their faith in their chosen religion is shaken.
Get a bigger toolbox...lol. J/K.
The Kennedy toolboxes have a special center drawer designed to fit the hardcover machinery's handbook. I have five of those and three roller cabinets.
As to books written by instructors, I looked at a book written by a professor at the university where the book is used. The "book" was actually two thin paperback volumes, one the text and the other a workbook. The two volumes sell in the school bookstore for $94.00. The cost to have the books printed in quantities of less than 200 was between $5 and $6, depending on the printer used. The book is required in a course that is a required course in virtually every curriculum in the university of 16,000+ students. The workbook had exercises that were required to be turned in on the pages to be torn out of the workbook, thereby eliminating the possibility of selling the either volume back to the bookstore (Hence, every incoming freshman had to buy a new book). And, beyond the obvious attempt to profit from selling the books to a captive group of purchasers, the book was poorly written (believe it or not, this was for a communication course and the book was written by someone holding a doctorate degree in communication), did not even have an index, did not reference material stated in the book and had blatant factual misinformation. The book is still being used in the course today.
Gutenberg had a good idea ... 600 years ago.
The current business model of universities is soon to come crashing down on them.
Corporations want employees who are prepared to work with minimal reeducation or specialization. If universities don’t provide employees that are capable, a university degree is less than worthless, because it deprives business of four of the most productive employee years.
So what happens when corporations let it be known that they are *not* hiring graduates based on their degree, that they prefer younger, degree-less employees?
It breaks the monopoly. The point comes when corporations have to reeducate the year or two unique to that business, that students should have received in university.
That is, the first two years of university education are general, as is perhaps half of the time spent in the junior and senior years. This leaves the equivalent of just one year’s worth of *real* education, as far as the employer is concerned.
So if a corporation tells its prospective employees to get their education with the corporation, and not waste their time in English Lit. and other such fluff, what happens to the university?
Ironically, the threshold for this may have been passed. It has recently been calculated that non-degree employees are passing degreed employees in total wages and benefits, for the first time.
Not only that, but non-degree employees are not crippled for 10 or 20 years by having to pay off an enormous student loan. They can start families sooner, as well as pay off a home mortgage sooner, and have a better retirement as well.
Universities across the US have behaved just like our federal government: spend and spend, and tax and tax. And, like with the federal debt, the bubble may soon be ready to burst.
I’m in an inexpensive state run community college. The text books cost as much as the courses. All the professors “feel that they are not paid enough” so they take the easy way out. As mentioned in this thread, they use the pre-canned stuff and let their students be screwed.
Of course, it is no doubt that the textbook makers are completely controlled state text book boards. The NYT seems to have forgotten to mention that little aspect of the story.
There is no market forces involved in making textbooks at all. It’s a scam from the state, the colleges and the book makers.
LOL... but it guarantees them to be liberal lawyers!
Western Carolina University has a unique solution to textbooks. The books are included in your tuition cost (which is very cheap by today’s standards). As long as you turn in the books at the end of the semester in good condition, there is no additional cost. I wish more colleges would do that.
They get sued into bankruptcy by the EEOC
The purpose of requiring a degree is to reduce the size of the applicant pool to those that can read and write at some minimal level. If you are hiring HS grads, then if your racial hiring patterns differ from the racial percentages of local HS grads, then you are screwed
In the past, employers could administer simple tests of IQ and writing ability, and hire and assign people accordingly. In those days, most people would go to work right out of high school, and maybe take classes at night or via correspondence courses. These days, it would be easy to deliver classes over the Web, and many places do. People could take classes on the side their whole lives, and stay current.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.