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Aug
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I remember paying a lot for textbooks when I was in school.
I also remember the high cost of text books mean using older text books when I attended school in New Jersey. When my family moved to Indiana, textbook costs meant paying book rental fees, even though the rest of a student’s elementary and secondary public education tuition cost was state financed by virtue of the Indiana Constitution.
It wasn’t uncommon to pay hundreds of dollars for textbooks when I was in college and law school — only to have them become almost worthless when it came time to sell them back at the end of the year. Some of it was the bookstores trying to maximize their profits — sell the books high, then buy them back for as little as they could, then resell them as used books for as high as the market would pay. It’s the American way.
Sometimes the books were made obsolete by new editions. This year’s text might have been reformatted or updated with new information making the older version less valuable, even though the core of the information remained valid and worthwhile for readers.
Some textbooks, such as mathematics and science texts, should seem to be the type of books that would retain their value because it is unlikely that major portions of the subject will change from year to year, but they are often republished as well.
But the internet might be changing this traditional publishing marketplace. Open source books are the future. Will open source textbooks — and publishers such as Curriki — catch on as students and schools seek ways to cut costs?
Writes the New York Time’s Ashlee Vance about a new effort to bring open source books to the public:
Over the last few years, groups nationwide have adopted the open-source mantra of the software world and started financing open-source books. Experts — often retired teachers or groups of teachers — write these books and allow anyone to distribute them in digital, printed or audio formats. Schools can rearrange the contents of the books to suit their needs and requirements.
But progress with these open-source texts has been slow.
The future is here.
But, will educational systems adopt open source textbooks?
Comments
4 Responses to “Will open source textbooks change education?”
Interesting article! I think every college bookstore sells high and buys low, mush to students’ frustrations.
And the new book publication were doubly frustrating. One year a text was updated and the professor instructed the bookstore to procure the old version of the text. Turns out, he just didn’t want to have to update his syllabus! We found out when we went to buy books that we wouldn’t be able to sell the books back at the end of the semester (and why).
My problem with most textbooks, especially at the college level is that they are so poorly written, especially for someone trying to learn a subject. When a paragraph is half a page long and consists of three sentences, something is wrong.
One subject that I studies had two standard textbooks, one written by A and one by B. Both have been around since the 1950s. Professor C decided to write a new updated text for teaching the subject. It was just a bad as the others, just more modern language!
I say if it is well written, bring on open source!
Hi Glinda,
I’m with you. When I was in college, I had a roommate who worked at a private college bookstore. I remember him telling me that people who held out for a higher price when selling their books back would sometimes get a few bucks more.
I like the idea of open source books that can be updated as needed and can be used by students at a low cost.
In some ways, some professors/instructors were already doing this back in the late ’80s and ’90s when they published their own texts at the local photocopy place using reprints of scholarly articles and other materials that weren’t to be found in standard textbooks. The cost was still relatively expensive because they had to pay for copying and copyright permissions. These days, the cost of printing can be eliminated — saving a handful of cents per page can add up to a significant savings.
At School days, i too used to purchase old books at 50% of original price, as you said in third para, booksellers takes book in low price and resell that as high as market would, pay it is not only in america, all over the world there is same situation.
there are mnay used books online and the price is cheap too but i wonder if the quality of it is good “.*