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Quartz reports
Seven Rhode Island universities, including Brown and Rhode Island College, will move to open-license textbooks [1] in a bid to save students $5 million over the next five years, the governor announced [September 27].
The initiative is meant to put a dent in the exorbitant cost of college and, more specifically, college textbooks. Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan Flint, and a writer at the American Enterprise Institute, estimated last year [Cloudflare protected] that college textbook prices rose 945% between 1978 and 2014, compared to an overall inflation rate of 262% and a 604% rise in the cost of medical care.
That is not the result of a general trend of higher costs in publishing, he notes: the consumer price index for recreational books has been falling relative to overall inflation since 1998.
[...] Open textbooks are defined as "faculty-written, peer-reviewed textbooks that are published under an open license--meaning that they are available free online, they are free to download, and print copies are available at $10-40, or approximately the cost of printing", according to a report by the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) (pdf). They are part of the move toward Open Educational Resources, which has roots in the open-source software movement, it says.
Open licenses allow for content to be shared, unlike traditional textbooks which limit the use of their materials. [Richard Culatta, the chief innovation officer for Rhode Island] remembers teaching and replacing a section of a textbook with more relevant information for his class, only to be informed that he was infringing on international copyright law.
[1] A very bloated (webfonts) all-script-driven page.
Note: If you are thinking of using "begs the question" in the same way the state official did, that is a bad idea.
Our previous discussions of student materials and adoption of openness.
(Score: 1) by Z-A,z-a,01234 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:25PM
Your English teacher was a visionary. The language is a living thing. What most people are using every day is THE LANGUAGE, in spite of the grammar books and the academy.
David Graeber has a very nice piece on this in his "The Utopia of Rules" book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @09:07PM
Visionary? Maybe, but the "language evolves" is the biggest cop-out for the illiterate. Caught using a malapropism? No worry, "language evolves". There are no wrong uses because "when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." Alanis Morissette can write a popular song that purports to demonstrate to everyone what is ironic through a bunch of examples, but ironically none of her examples are actually examples of irony. But who cares? Let's just say that language evolves end it there.
I am forever thankful that the fields of physics and engineering aren't dominated by frustrated and failed humanities majors. "Hey Joe, that model of a bridge you made is horrible. It's going to fall over!" "Don't you know Steve, physics evolves. Don't be so closed minded."
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:31PM
There are no wrong uses because "when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
That's pretty much the complete opposite of the English teacher's argument. Rather than saying, "I know what my word means and to heck with the rest of you!" the English teacher was arguing that language is fundamentally about communicating with an audience. There are all sorts of words that Shakespeare or Chaucer or whatever historical writer used that now mean different things. If I try to use them the way Chaucer would in front of a modern audience, I might be greeted with blank stares and confusion. Communication has failed. Language has failed.
So, the English teacher's argument is -- in such a case, rather than confusing your audience with something that sounds archaic and weird (even if, by some arbitrary standard, it's still "technically correct" for some people), instead choose a DIFFERENT word or phrase that better communicates your meaning.
Nobody here is arguing that educated speakers should adopt incorrect usage. Only when usage is disputed and changing, it's best to find a word or phrase that communicates your meaning clearly.
"Don't you know Steve, physics evolves. Don't be so closed minded."
Actually, um, physics DOES evolve. Physics is a science created by humans and is thus limited at any time to current understanding. Ptolemaic systems gave way to Copernican and Tychonic systems, which gave way to a Newtonian understanding of the solar system, which then evolved as Einstein clarified things further, etc. Insisting that a word still means the same thing as in Shakespeare's time when no educated speakers use it that way anymore is like claiming that Ptolemy is still right and the planets really DO go around the earth.
(And please note that this whole discussion is focused on educated speakers, not pop stars or rednecks or Cockney slang. There is a "standard" English used in most formal writing, but when most of the people educated and familiar with that style don't adhere to a meaning anymore, then the meaning has shifted.)