Guy Lombardo put up a bid of $40 for it on eBay, but he got beat out at the last minute by some guy with a SmartPhone. Apparently you can do all kinds of stuff with those things.
Hopefully the brave textbook publishers* will maintain their stranglehold on the market.**
* Guess which industry I work in.
** Which they will, btw, because copyright is king. Apple, Google, doesn't matter, they'll get their cut. I could be wrong, but for several reasons I don't see a major shift toward "creator-owned" textbooks in the near future.
Based on my experience in higher education, it does seem like copyright owners, i. e. publishers still have control. There are always exceptions, such as professors writing a textbook then choosing not to copyright it, so students won't need to pay high prices. Even ebooks don't seem much cheaper than physical textbooks yet. I'm lucky that most of my books for classes are available used cheaply online.
I think free online textbooks are the future. MIT has books for many courses online, and WikiMedia are working on free textbooks (and now have expanded to cookbooks, bartending books, and more). I've got a link for a thread full of free CompSci books. I wasn't going to jump into this discussion until I was searching Google for a term in economic theory, and found an Economics textbook online. I think students (i.e. customers) will put pressure on schools to use the free texts. Why should students have to buy a book if there is a perfectly acceptable book that is free?
Doofy: I know you guys hate the way that English teachers insist on teaching that long-dead British playright when there are so many more recent plays which have copyright in full force.
In England (but not the rest of the UK) the answer is very straightforward - big business, generally run by USA (eg Edilson) or Swedish companies. State schools are being privatised away from local government control to become 'independent state schools', many with business sponsors, but with schools being required to buy in lots of services from companies. These companies are supposed to take their profits from the savings they enable. It is all based upon the ideas of an American expert - sorry can't remember his name. The idea is that standards will rise; I don't follow the logic.
With regard to the discussion above, my neice started an Eng Lit degree last September. She has very quickly realised that it will save her money buying a Kindle for older, copyright free books etc. So I'd include Amazon in the question at the start of the thread.
I guess I was thinking more along the lines Greg was when I said Pepsi. (Guy Lombardo was just a Yellow Submarine reference that popped into my head for no discernible reason.)
In the US, higher education costs continue to skyrocket, but at the same time, companies have to do an incredible amount of training on anybody they higher with an astronomically expensive, but essentially useless degree in something like the physics, meta and otherwise, of comic books. So I've long thought that it can't be long before big businesses start recruiting out of high school, and ten either pay for, or provide, the education they want the asset to have. Then, last week, pretty much exactly that, and the provision of incentives for same, was a major talking point in Obama's state of the union.
Text books? Sorry Doofy, but they seemed a drop in the bucket back when I went to school; dint get me wrong; they are expensive as he'll, but nothing compared to the rest of the money you're shelling out. Books just hurt because they cost you actual money, rather than federal loan money.
We're going to £9000 per year just for the fees for a degree next academic year. It was announced today that applications have gone down by nearly 10%, no suprise there. I can't say that I'd want to owe around £40,000-£50,000 including living costs just for getting a degree.No wonder most students work now, but that reduces the jobs available for others
I think textbooks are probably more relevant to some subjects than others. Maybe there's a case in some areas for having a ponderously written, either tendentious or watery-bland overview of a large amount of information; in the humanities I prefer to do without and use primary texts.
I take your point GP, but it still seems a lot compared to the past here, when I got a grant. I agree with your point about primary sources. What I encourage students to use most of all is already available online anyway - academic journals, virtually all are now available electronically
Oh yes, it's definitely new territory for the UK. And less balanced by philanthropy than it is here. (The fees at the private college where I teach are higher than the figure you quoted, but only the wealthiest students actually pay all of them; for many/most it is offset by scholarships that are essentially philanthropically funded and can range up to a large percentage of the tuition, so quoting the tuition price is actually misleading.)
It certainly is new territory here. Of course the wealthy will have no problem, and, in theory at least, those from poorer families should get bursaries, but it is enough to put many off applying. But as you will be aware where there is no background of university education, far fewer actually apply. My niece, a very naive year one student, just assumed it would mean that universities had more income so would have more staff, books etc. I quickly corrected her views!
I'd say the textbook publishers have been jacking up the prices as much as they think they can get away with before their whole business model inevitably comes crashing down around them, which in turn only speeds up the inevitable crashing-down process. I've been seeing prices of well over $300 for a single book, when just 5-10 years ago it was still fairly unusual to see any that were significantly over $100.
Yes I agree ScissorMan. I wanted a book for an academic article I'm writing recently. The cost was £189, over $200, just hardback. Eventually I got my library at work to get it on an inter library loan. I only wanted one chapter. Way too expensive. They would sell more at a cheaper price.
Comments
Who owns it now?
* Guess which industry I work in.
** Which they will, btw, because copyright is king. Apple, Google, doesn't matter, they'll get their cut. I could be wrong, but for several reasons I don't see a major shift toward "creator-owned" textbooks in the near future.
Doofy: I know you guys hate the way that English teachers insist on teaching that long-dead British playright when there are so many more recent plays which have copyright in full force.
With regard to the discussion above, my neice started an Eng Lit degree last September. She has very quickly realised that it will save her money buying a Kindle for older, copyright free books etc. So I'd include Amazon in the question at the start of the thread.
and where is encyclopedia britannica today?
In the US, higher education costs continue to skyrocket, but at the same time, companies have to do an incredible amount of training on anybody they higher with an astronomically expensive, but essentially useless degree in something like the physics, meta and otherwise, of comic books. So I've long thought that it can't be long before big businesses start recruiting out of high school, and ten either pay for, or provide, the education they want the asset to have. Then, last week, pretty much exactly that, and the provision of incentives for same, was a major talking point in Obama's state of the union.
Text books? Sorry Doofy, but they seemed a drop in the bucket back when I went to school; dint get me wrong; they are expensive as he'll, but nothing compared to the rest of the money you're shelling out. Books just hurt because they cost you actual money, rather than federal loan money.