It’s ironic that Martin over at the University Blog is talking about the future of books as that’s something I’m interested in discussing today as well.
I’m the chair of our colleges student advisory board, and one of the big things we get to talk about with the College of Arts and Sciences is how we deal with the high cost of text books (here’s an article from a newspaper in my state) between nepotism and departments making shady deals and some professors not giving it the slightest big of attention - students are being gouged by high book prices.
And, aside from forbidding these sorts of “department agreements,” most of the fix for this issue is going to rest on the compliance of the faculty which as anyone knows who spent much time in the university environment - getting the faculty to do anything different is a herculean task.
My suggestions will be as follow, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter:
- As a first step, faculty must be concious of their book lists - their availability and price, and then see if better alternatives are available. As this could safe their students, collectively, thousands of dollars - it is a worthwhile thing to do.
- Once compiled, faculty needs to send out the book list (clearly marked between essential and optional books) to students as soon as possible. Either email using class rosters or use online class services available at the institution. This allows students time to shop around online for the best price.
- The faculty needs to share the book list with all local college textbook resellers. This helps the ability to find the books as well as will help encourage price competitino.
- Oversight must be in check to be certain vanity text books, and shady departmental deals are not allowed spuriously. “Just because you helped edit that new German text book doesn’t mean that it either the best or the most economic option for students.”
- Publishing book lists for the next semester as early as possible, allowing for the most possible buy-back when students sell their textbooks. (Book stores base their prices on what they know will be in use the next semester.)
- Digital versions of books needs to be investigated as an alternative.
Our university decided to start a book archive, but it is of obviously limited use. So what am I forgetting? Does your college or university do anything to help students with text book costs? Do you have the miracle cure? Let’s hear about it in the comments!!
17/01/2008 at 8:09 am Permalink
I was lucky at uni, as we had less vanity book choices than certain institutions I’d been told about.
In fact, one lecturer had a pretty interesting book out and used it heavily in his teaching. Rather than make students buy the book, he photocopied chapters for everyone.
Having reminded me about this, I may see if the book’s still available. I’d love to buy it for real.
The annoying point of the non-essential book list is that you still get a lot of students who want to read/use the expensive books, but only one or two copies of each book lives in a library on campus.
That’s why I suggest visiting the libraries as soon as you get a book list. No waiting, or you risk disappointment.
I would like to see many more digital versions of textbooks. While a novel is perhaps more difficult to devour on screen, textbooks are often easier to search and use as an electronic file. Also, they should be cheaper to buy. And better for the environment…
17/01/2008 at 8:20 am Permalink
I really like digital versions, myself. The main problem is I generally need both - I don’t like reading large chunks of text on the screen (and since I’m a Religious Studies major and philosophy/history minor I have a LOT of reading) it’s difficult to do exclusively. But I love the versatility and the search abilities.
When I had a tablet I would scan in every book I used and just bring that to class - easy to find info, quick to add notes or markup too. Worked beautifully.
17/01/2008 at 11:26 am Permalink
I really like digital versions, and I can always print them out if I don’t want to read them on screen.
18/01/2008 at 11:19 am Permalink
Two things:
1) An important point to make is that professors are usually not aware how much a book costs. Publishers have a wine-and-dine mentality when it comes to book sales. Because of this, professors’ book catalogs have no prices in them.
2) Electronic books can be dangerous, as I talked about in an article I wrote at HackCollege because DRM eliminates any chance of a free market. If you can’t resell your books or go to another vendor, there’s no way to vote with your dollar. That’s frightening and dangerous. Also, publishers tend to charge the same amount for the book, even though they aren’t footing the cost of printing.
18/01/2008 at 11:22 am Permalink
@Kelly-
1) That’s part of the problem. Prof’s are just notoriously lazy about this sort of thing. They need to get online and take five seconds to find out the price.
2) I agree. There’s a reason I was somewhat vague in reference to digital versions. I like making them myself for my own books, but wouldn’t like to deal with the DRM (and as I use a Mac and my IT department is filled with morons, I probably couldn’t use whatever official thing they did anyway).
20/01/2008 at 10:56 am Permalink
Gideon-
I am a professor and I agree with you that the price of textbooks has become a bit much and that something has to be done. However, I disagree with your statement that “Prof’s are notoriously lazy about this sort of thing.” Aside from the fact that most professors I know work 60-80 hour weeks during the school year, and the usual problems that professors are tenured and promoted for factors other than teaching, I think you should be aware of a couple other things that affect textbook choices and some of your suggested changes specifically.
1) the time cost of a new prep makes switching textbooks a daunting tasks, and means professors can’t be as responsive to price changes as they would like. Imagine I assigned you three one hour oral reports each week; how much time would it take for you to prepare those? Even with using the same text and lecture notes every year, most professors can’t get prep time under 1.5-2hrs per hour in class. That means every 3hr class is going to take about 18hrs a week, before grading, meeting with students, etc., not to mention other responsibilities. Switching textbooks adds at least another hour per hour of class time to prep! Textbook companies know this and exploit it.
2) Many students nowadays demand powerpoint lectures, downloadable pdfs of notes, etc. I believe in these tools to the degree they help learning. However, if I switch textbooks I have to redo all of this due to legal issues with use of copyright material, etc.
3) We typically don’t have access to course rosters until right before class starts, and other potential ways of advertising the information ahead of time don’t always work. For instance, I could put the ISBN numbers on the Blackboard site, but students do not get registered in this before classes start. I have put the information on a separate wed page I maintain for the course, but am at a loss for other ideas that would work.
I think you are doing the right thing to bring attention to this. The book bank idea is good, but are things you could do in courses you take that would help the professor and possibly your grade. A couple of ideas:
1) offer to create a table listing readings in the current edition and previous editions. Many science and tech textbooks only rearrange problem sets in different editions, so this shouldn’t be too hard. Also, by comparing the two texts and noticing what was different in each, you would learn the material really well!
2) help create figures and offer them free for the teaching community. If you are slightly artisitically inclined, redo a figure from the textbook. Again, in doing this you would learn that material amazingly well. And having such material in open resources such as BIODIDAC for biology (http://biodidac.bio.uottawa.ca/) helps reduce dependence on copyrighted material.
3) Make yourself a set of summary notes of all the lectures, and post it to Wikibooks. If you are in a smaller upper-level course you should ask your professor first, as the syllabus and content are their intellectual property. However, for intro courses the overview of the subject is common knowledge. By putting this bare-bones structure at Wikibooks, you will likely catalyze some professor such as myself coming in and filling the gaps. And you have the first step to a free textbook.
4) Get a student group to organize and maintain a list of ISBN numbers for texts from various courses on campus. Students would then know where to go for such information, and many profs would happily provide this information.