What is Digg?93 Comments
- xxBondsxx, on 09/02/2008, -0/+43The bookstore at my college (a UC, thank you very much) absolutely rapes students when it comes to textbooks. They sell the "used" ones only $10 off the ~$200 price, but buy them back from the students in FRONT of the store for $10-15. So basically, they are making $180 dollars a quarter on ONE book from ONE student that they can recycle several times through different generations, when they didn't even BUY IT in the first place (it was used, remember?).
That's why I use half.com now... saves a lot of money. It's still not the answer though, like the article hints at
What the article doesn't mention though is the huge demand (and beginning-to-materialize movement) to pirate textbooks. Sure no one wants to scan them in, but once Generic Calculus Book (c) is on the Pirate Bay top 100, everyone in calculus classes across the nation gets a huge break to their wallets (and a much more convenient way of transporting the book too).
When some students are only using the books to look up homework problems (and sometimes not even reading them), what's the point in buying? - fwertz, on 09/03/2008, -0/+22"because they are updated every couple of years..."
More like every ***** semester. - Airforcefalco, on 09/02/2008, -1/+21Too bad I can't read :-(
- 80hd, on 09/03/2008, -2/+171. get books
2. Tripod, camera, 25 minutes per book, picasa and beer
3. return books
4. ???
5. ***** the RIAA!! (or book publishing equivalent)
-Bonus points if the camera setup is borrowed too - yourmanstan, on 09/02/2008, -3/+16nice thought, but i doubt mcgraw hill will let it happen
- harrisbradley, on 09/03/2008, -0/+11One step towards putting the educational system online where it belongs.
- jidusnoot, on 09/03/2008, -0/+11Why couldn't something like this have happened BEFORE I finished college?
- 80hd, on 09/03/2008, -0/+9It's sick when spanish books are updated to new editions every semester so that book stores can't trade used books. As if foreign languages are such proprietary and quickly changing knowledge....
Publishers need to be brought under control, it's just sick. - Kallius, on 09/03/2008, -0/+8When someone pirates a book, it's called "theft."
When the publisher or bookstore gouges the student who is basically trapped into buying outrageously priced books, it's called "capitalism." - doctechnical, on 09/02/2008, -1/+9You bring up a critical point - selling textbooks is a huge profit center for universities, so what possible incentive would the have to move to open content?
Not to mention that textbooks are written by professors, and guess who's texts are required in their courses? If the sound "Cha-CHING!" came to mind, you're on the right track. - evanjoecool, on 09/03/2008, -0/+6longest freakin comment ever
- BananaGrabber, on 09/03/2008, -0/+6I stopped buying textbooks last year. In my experience, you save at least 50% for most books if you rent them instead. My favorite online rental shop is http://campusbookrentals.com .
- sasquatchcrotch, on 09/03/2008, -0/+5Meh the college I go to is 2500 a semester, and includes textbook rental. Freshman/Sophomore colleges FTW. All college is pretty overpriced if you can teach yourself, sadly.
“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”
-Frank Zappa - Pake, on 09/03/2008, -0/+5It's really a sad state of affairs when you look at it. The colleges are effectively screwing the students by selling us used books instead of selling only new books. As long as the colleges can sell the used and make huge profits for themselves, the publishers have to create new editions to continue to exist. They're also forced into selling the books for a much higher price. Basically, if it wasn't for colleges selling used books, our $200 books would most likely cost closer to $100 new. However, as long as used books are sold, we'll continue to pay $200 for a new book while the college bookstore racks in a gigantic profit by selling the book for $170 after buying it back for $30.
- mrb4b00, on 09/03/2008, -1/+6I stopped buying textbooks two years ago.
Most professors in my school now make their own lecture slides and/or post them online.
For homeworks and reference, or studying I just visit the library to check out books.
How about you? - Airforcefalco, on 09/02/2008, -1/+5Let's not forget to mention that most books don't last for more than a year or two.
- foolfoolz, on 09/03/2008, -0/+4yea can't tell you how many people split books. 4-5 people buy one book. at at my UC there's tons of copy rooms all over school at each department. so if anyone needed the book at the same time copying pages onto sheets was really easy. (don't pay for copies)
- adam07, on 09/03/2008, -2/+6College students get ***** in the ass when it comes to textbooks. My books for this year:
Art History - $125
Russian - $122
Economics - $70
Spanish - $40 - inactive, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3Kaisglk laksdjf lkval fe salkd fqzmi! :)
- Aturaten, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3400 bucks is over 61 hours of work at 6.50 minimum wage not counting taxes on either income or the books themselves. Food is a necessity and is practically sold at cost for the most part, price gauging on books is huge and the main reason why kids cannot afford them.
- Greg2b, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3Great idea, but for now I still think we should find a way to use textbooks digitally as a standard not an extra.
Nearly all college students have a laptop that he or she takes to class and with that each student should be able to have a virtual copy of the textbook using webapps and not paper & cardboard that is so very often never recycled. - NotYourProdigy, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3You may be on to something here. Just follow through, damnit!
- Checkerd, on 09/03/2008, -1/+4.yad emos nrael ll'uoy erus m'I ,yako stI
- AnonBuffalo, on 09/03/2008, -1/+4www.textbooktorrents.com
- inactive, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3www.textbooktorrents.com
- DesertSquirrel, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3Old editions aren't worthless. The only thing that they may do is have chapters 3 and 4 swap places. Do a bit of research on the changes, and you can save hundreds of dollars each semester by getting the previous editions.
- fuzzynyanko, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3Actually, some school libraries have the textbook or the previous version of the textbook so you can check them out.
- fuzzynyanko, on 09/03/2008, -0/+3I love the CS courses I took that used standard "how to program" books since those were $20-60 (usually in the $20-30 range). However, those books aren't the problematic ones. Also, my Calculus book was expensive, but we actually used the entire book over 3 classes! I didn't mind paying full price for that one.
Anyways, yeah, the ones not sold at a book store usually costed $60-150. - inactive, on 09/03/2008, -4/+7lol liberal arts major
- inactive, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2Yes, they expect you to take out a huge private loan that you will be paying back for the next 15 yrs to afford them too. Buy on ebay, buy older editions. OR buy new edition, scan the pages in to your comp, return book.
- cadmiumpaint, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2this company is only publishing 8 books..... crickets......
go old school. a good friend of mine dual majored and got her self into law school never buying a single book in college. she just lived at the library for 4 years using the reserve copies of every textbook you need.
that requires dedication which is lacking in the "if i can't torrent it, it doesn't exist" generation. - Richandler, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2I'm just using the library right now and haven't spent a cent on textbooks for this semester. I'm going to see how much I can get away with. I don't mind buying the $15 books but I refuse to pay $100 for less than 4 months of required work. I also may try this whole camera thing.
- ray4389, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2Not sure the price of each book but
Total= $585
University Calc new
Computer Science Discrete Math new
Solutions Manual ^^^ used
Data Structures using C++ and STL used
Public Speaking new
Philosophy new - inactive, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2McGraw Hill doesn't have the final say about educational materials in the long run. They don't own all the writers, researchers and editors in the country. It's the content that matters -- not the paper and binding.
New textbooks published online can make existing publishers obsolete within a few years if they don't change the way they do business. - Pake, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2It's not the publishers, it's the schools who are causing the high prices. Think about it. The school buys the book back for $30 and sells it for $130 while the new book is $160. While the school just made a huge ass profit, the publisher is forced into releasing new editions to prevent the schools from putting them out of business. If the schools didn't sell back used copies, the publishers could continue to sell the same editions for a number of years for a much lower price.
- Louis11, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2Yea, this summer I bought a book that was being sold at the local book store for $195 (used) off Half.com for $75 (NEW)! Then sold it back to the local bookstore for $95. Suckers :-P
But in either case, I typically buy offline when applicable. My school has a Calculus book they wrote (figures) and some professors make you buy their books, which often are only available at a particular bookstore. I would scan them and return them, only most bookstores around here shrink wrap their books and if they are opened you can't return them . . .
In my honest opinion it's a scam, and not worth my time. To quote Good Will Hunting:
"you blew 150k on an education you could have gotten in$1.50 in late fees from the library." - missamanda271, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2I use bigwords.com. Done very well for me so far. Three accounting books last semester for a little under $100. The only time I can't use it is when those stupid online access codes are involved. Then I'm forced to buy them new unless my instructor lets us know we won't need them.
- Remmiz, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2Wow, Wikipedia has listings of every problem in books too? The only reason why Comp Sci students should ever buy a book.
- kodek, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2You're making a good point. Those $400 could get you a cheap laptop which will be good for a few years (at least as an ebook reader)
- kavaliro, on 09/03/2008, -0/+21. Great idea. Except that a more developed--and more importantly, Creative Commons--project already exists to fill this niche: http://cnx.org/
2. *cough*Vaporware*cough.* Not even a proof-of-concept textbook on the site?? I was skeptical before I tried the website, now I've got visions of Duke Nukem Forever dancing in my head.
Though, I'm not knocking the idea. The textbook industry paradigm has been marked for obsoletion in much the same way that the traditional music industry paradigm has been. Neither are viable any longer, because the power to create rich content rests easily with the average Joe due to the proliferation of personal computing. - TheOther1, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2You forgot about the kickbacks and "special incentives" given to school boards.
- regression, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2you all suck...try being pre-med.
682.65+tax=740.68...is what i am being raped for ONE semester of required material. If I actually had the money for the optional raping, i'm looking at nearly a grand.
***** that. i need to eat. i think i'll scan them all and then return them. - jayb1rd, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2Many of the texts in my Western Civ class were things like "The Communist Manifesto" and other works with no copyright. Instead of spending over $200 on lots of little books like the other idiots in my class, I found them all on Project Gutenberg and didn't spend a cent on that class. If I had to write a paper and cite a book source, I went to the library. It took some extra work but I saved a ton of money and got an A.
- ray4389, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2I agree--there is no source code, so how about you use the more propper terms 'opentext' or 'openknowledge'
- KaJuN4, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2This is a bad idea. If college bookstores can no longer make huge profits on used books then the parking department will make up for it by raising their already outrageous parking permit prices. Why are universities, especially ones that receive public funding, being run like businesses? People attending these schools are students, not customers.
- inactive, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2If they didn't price gauge students, then they wouldn't have such a problem with piracy. And that article is wrong about older editions, the only difference between the new and the old is that they might of switched chapters, might of put a new picture somewhere in there, and added a new comma or period.
- djogwe24, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2First off, I want to applaud you on this post. Very well thought out and you raise some good points. However, I do disagree with you on a few things.
I think you are getting the wrong idea about the quality of open source. You argue that open source textbooks will never be of the same quality as textbooks written by professionals. I disagree. The nature of open source is that anyone can add content; thus, what is stopping professionals from contributing to the open source project?
With thousands of educated minds contributing to these subjects they would be far more refined, easier to understand because they are being corrected by thousands of people with different viewpoints, and they would end up being much more accurate than if a small group of experts wrote the book. Even though they are experts, that does not mean they know everything.
Take Wikipedia for example. Wikipedia still has its flaws but in its well known areas, it is very accurate. It has even been claimed to contain fewer errors than encyclopedia Britannica. Therefore, if you use a similar concept but with textbooks in mind, the "how-to" guides would in theory become very accurate over time. They will start off with flaws, but as more and more people contribute and edit, they will become very useful.
You also argue that books do not teach students teachers teach students. This is true presently, but you are missing the true potential that these free open source text books can have on the education system.
Currently, students best learn from their teachers because that is the way it has always been. The teacher has always been the number once source of knowledge. However, that does not mean that students cannot learn on their own. If a student decides to read a college textbook in his leisure time, he can still learn the subject. He is just teaching himself.
If people realize they now have the opportunity to teach themselves, the education system becomes obsolete. Brainchilds will be created who have grown up from a young age just reading and learning new subjects off of these free open source guides. These open source textbooks have the possibility of freeing up the education system, where the quality of your education is determined by how much a student actually wants to learn.
Lastly you also mention that cheap education sucks because it is cheap. That is not necessarily true. Colleges like MIT create more innovation than state universities because only very determined and very smart individuals can get into MIT. It is a club of smart kids. Of course they will pump out more innovation that a university where kids do not have the same motivation.
Give a community college more money and true they can buy better teachers, better facilities, and better textbooks but that will not make a difference if the students do not care to learn it.
Overall, you make many good points though, it was a good read. - Barackalypse, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2I just photocopied the reserve books, we took a more hands on approach to copyright violation back in my day.
- cadmiumpaint, on 09/03/2008, -0/+1teachers just gave us photocopies of readings back in the day......back when they budget's allowed for unlimited photocopies for teachers.
- uglysmurf, on 09/03/2008, -0/+1Open source textbooks are already becoming a reality. New York City-based software company Wireless Generation sponsors:
http://free-reading.net/
...an "open-source instructional program that helps educators teach early literacy". It's even been approved by the Florida DOE:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/01/23/20bri ... -
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