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High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

torrentfreak.com

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Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#181

Post by jimhefferon »

newsclues wrote: post #125
kelseyfrog wrote: post #8

Here's a weird idea. Bundle materials into tuition expenses. It incentivizes the right people with the power and market participation to optimize for the right thing. Presumably, teachers and departments would have to justify costs from a materials budget to an admin forcing real downward pressure on the textbook market. The current state of textbooks acts like a surprise fee(dark pattern) where you purchase a produc…

> Here's a weird idea. Bundle materials into tuition expenses. As a former textbook seller, professors will exploit this for profit by publishing their own textbook at inflated prices and collecting a nice reward. This does happen in some places (or did, I'm out of the industry). Imagine if every state or country developed their own open source curriculum, instead of allowing publishers to exists as owners and gateke…

Couple of points, which as a former seller I suspect you know, but students often do not.

1) There is no best book for a subject. What suits a class in Elementary Statistics in one place or program might be all wrong for another.

2) There's a lot more to developing texts (or, as you say, curriculum) than people think. Besides a book, there are exercises and answers to the exercises. There are in class slides, perhaps programming components, and the elephant in the room is integration with the most popular LMSs. And all this has to be kept up to date.

It really requires money. At least in the US, I'm unaware of funding.

I'm an Open Text author so I'm sympathetic to your thoughts but it proves to be complex, IMHO

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#182

Post by PeterisP »

Robotbeat wrote: post #73
AHOHA wrote: post #70

Almost everything in North America is criminally priced with almost zero regulations, and all political parties are responsible for that: wanna buy a house, enjoy your 70y mortgage, wanna study, enjoy your student loans and expensive textbooks, oh you actually got sick, how rude?? Pay a hefty price or enjoy your 10hrs waiting time in the ER, Restaurants?! Pfft, pay the inflated prices for garbage food and don’t forge…

Gas is insanely cheap in the US compared to almost any other developed country. Food is fairly inexpensive as well. Housing has major problems in part stemming from over-regulation via zoning, NIMBYism, etc.

The actual cost of gas is actually about the same in US and other western countries, with the major difference being that in almost every other country you pay a hefty extra tax on gas on top of that cost - above and beyond usual sales taxes, often more than the actual gas cost - as means of reducing emissions and/or funding roads. So yes, US has cheaper gas at the pump, but it's not because of market efficiency but because of the differences of government policy to encourage/discourage gas consumption.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#183

Post by jayd16 »

giantg2 wrote: post #55
sowbug wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to five-whys this before suggesting a solution. Start by asking whether whoever was in charge of requiring the $250 textbook benefited personally from its purchase.

It's more likely they were lazy and conformed to the status quo. You know, the old never attribute to malice what is easily explained by ignorance.

Is it more likely? The most overpriced books I was required to buy were the ones the professor wrote.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#184

Post by sterlind »

ncallaway wrote: post #61
vanilla_nut wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but this feels like it'll cause even more issues. Today, clever students can share books, buy used, share electronic copies, or skip the book entirely if they don't think it's necessary. With this system, every student is forced to buy their textbook indirectly through tuition, which will of course rise significantly based on the cost of a textbook for an average class. It's kind of like m…

That’s the thing, any mandatory costs (textbooks, meal plans, etc) should be bundled into the standard tuition price. It needs to be bundled into the top line price that people are actually aware of when they’re making their “purchase decision” (where to go to college)

but just like tuition, the overall price seems to be increasing across the (college) board, especially for the prestigious schools. this purchase decision stuff is not working.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#185

Post by RecycledEle »

ChatGPT has made this argument obsolete. First, ChatGPT can generate textbooks that can not be copyrighted. Second, ChatGPT makes textbooks obsolete by replacing one-size-fits-all text with custom answers to questions.

Source: I'm a teacher.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#186

Post by sterlind »

esafak wrote: post #75
ncallaway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing, any mandatory costs (textbooks, meal plans, etc) should be bundled into the standard tuition price. It needs to be bundled into the top line price that people are actually aware of when they’re making their “purchase decision” (where to go to college)

And can pay with a low interest rate loan.

for the next 15 years.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#187

Post by ehvatum »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #175
LanceH wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freshman year, first semester, I paid $1100 for books, and then we only actually used one of them more than slightly. This really bothers me. Universities hold themselves up as virtuous. Then students hire them to provide to provide an education. Instead of being agents for the students, the students are instead treated like a captive market. There is a very real conflict of interest in universities profiting off t…

It's complete bullshit You can now comfortably afford to hire a staff of PhD students to tutor you 1on1 in every subject you want to learn more cheaply than going to a university. So where the FUCK is all that money going?

> So where the FUCK is all that money going?

Please be aware that higher education is a massive dumping ground for the lowest-performing segment of the politically-connected managerial class, who are too cowardly and lazy to run for elected office, and too stupid and impulsive to make it in industry.

Academia is perfect, for them: a gigantic stage for demonstrating moral superiority and hiring friends, with no fundamentals that matter at all.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#188

Post by diffeomorphism »

agrue wrote: post #163
diffeomorphism wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, almost never. That is usually forced by the university, publishers and, surprisingly, by the students and their parents: Say the textbook used for the last 5 years costs $300 and now you want to switch to a different, cheaper book. Now you have to convince admin (why switch? The previous one works) and students (I pay $$$ tuition, why are you cheaping out on the book? Is it worse?). > how much royalty do they ge…

> Basically nothing You might consider providing a more concrete example if you're going to throw shame around. This answer feels emotionally charged and incomplete.

> You might consider providing a more concrete example if you're going to throw shame around. This answer feels emotionally charged and incomplete.

Exactly what I am calling out. Thanks.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#189

Post by morkalork »

There was a mathematics professor in Canada who wrote what became the standard calculus textbooks used in universities here (the violin ones). Anyways, one day a local paper did a little showcase of the house that textbooks paid for and now that I'm trying to dig up a reference to that article, I find it has its own Wikipedia page!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_House

Suffice to say, I, nor anyone else, should not feel bad about pirating that series of books.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#190

Post by TT-392 »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #27
kelseyfrog wrote: post #8

Here's a weird idea. Bundle materials into tuition expenses. It incentivizes the right people with the power and market participation to optimize for the right thing. Presumably, teachers and departments would have to justify costs from a materials budget to an admin forcing real downward pressure on the textbook market. The current state of textbooks acts like a surprise fee(dark pattern) where you purchase a produc…

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but this feels like it'll cause even more issues. Today, clever students can share books, buy used, share electronic copies, or skip the book entirely if they don't think it's necessary. With this system, every student is forced to buy their textbook indirectly through tuition, which will of course rise significantly based on the cost of a textbook for an average class. It's kind of like m…

How about a system like the one dutch highschools use. In that system, the students get the books from school at the start of the year and return them at the end of the year (the school owns the books). That way the books are for sure reused, and the price is reduced.
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