Network World reports
Finally, a bit of good news on the college costs front: A study out of Brigham Young University finds that free open [knowledge] textbooks do the job pretty darn well.
The study of nearly 17,000 students at 9 colleges found that open [knowledge] textbooks (or open educational resources--OERs in academic lingo) found that students learn the same amount or more from the free books across many subjects. (Here's a sampling of the sorts of texts available, via a University of Minnesota site.)
What's more, 85% of students and instructors said open textbooks were actually better than the commercial ones. The research focused its results based on measurements such as course completion, final grade, final grade of C- or higher, enrollment intensity, and enrollment intensity in the following semester.
[...] [Besides cost, another] beauty of the open textbooks is that instructors can customize them with fresh content via open licenses.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Monday November 16 2015, @04:24PM
Now... let's ignore it and keep going with the kickback based approach.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @04:36PM
I find it ironic that the textbooks costs more than the tuition.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday November 16 2015, @04:50PM
Depends on where you go to school. Certainly my tuition was much, much higher than my substantial investment in textbooks. Of course I didn't go to a school that received government subsidies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @05:39PM
Unless you're going to a really shitty community college, how is that possible? Every place in my state the tuition is at least a magnitude or more a semester more expensive than the textbooks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Lunix Nutcase on Monday November 16 2015, @05:46PM
At what specific college is this true? You must live in a state with heavily subsidized tuition for that to be true.
Just some examples from my state for in-state, undergraduate rates:
University of Texas: ~$5500 for a full 12 hour load.
Texas Tech: ~$2400 for a full 12 hour load.
Texas A&M: ~$2900 for a full 12 hour load.
Even at the lowest cost one, the textbooks would have to cost over $600 per class (which is not the case) for it to cost more than tuition.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 16 2015, @06:19PM
They soak the full timers knowing there's government loan money to be taken, being shakedown artists... part timers can pay $100/credit at the public community college, $200/credit at the 2-year state branch uni, or $300/credit at the not too far away 4-year state uni. Theres a small liberal arts private school that on paper charges only $300 something per hour but by the time you add the nickel and dime fees (parking, technology, activity fees, etc) you're up to about $400.
You'll get the same transferable credit for public speaking or calculus, you just get to select how much you'd like to pay.
Interestingly enough the CC has regular non tenure track nonacademic teachers (K12 moonlighters), I have no experience at the 2-yr, the public uni was all non-english speaking foreign students, the private liberal arts class was skilled grad student taught although discrete math was taught personally by an actual tenured prof.
Anyway your local situation might vary, but its totally possible to dial up as little as $100/credit for calculus and pay $199 for the textbook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @06:22PM
To answer the above questions, it's a community college. The tuition was $130 per block and the psych textbook was $350.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Monday November 16 2015, @06:28PM
Anyway your local situation might vary, but its totally possible to dial up as little as $100/credit for calculus and pay $199 for the textbook.
All my calc classes were 3 hours so even if the book was $199 it would still have been cheaper than the class.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 16 2015, @09:05PM
Ah OK understood. It likely varies from class to class, and you never ever escape with only one textbook. I believe they stretched our calc out to four semesters at two creds each for a total of eight, I'm guessing you probably did three semesters at three creds each. Then again it was a long time ago.
We had a real textbook of impressive proportions and an affiliated workbook and a specific model of TI calculator recommended (probably now, ancient, I think it was the TI-81, new at the time, vastly inferior to the HP48) and some extra texts (the only extra text had the weird name "div grad curl and all that, an informal text on vector calculus" but there was also another add on text)
I wonder if the number of textbooks has been on decline in classes. As part of my liberal arts requirements I sat thru some history and literature classes with quite an impressive pile of books. I remember having to read "Killer Angels" AND another less memorable memoir for just a single weeks reading of American History. With costs spiraling out of control I would not be surprised if some profs take pity and cut back on the number of books.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Covalent on Monday November 16 2015, @04:41PM
Yup. Came here to say just this. University education (and really public education, too) is about one thing, and one thing only: Separating you from your money. I'm a high school teacher, and I can tell you that mass market textbooks range in quality from Fair to Awful. It's really not hard for an open knowledge textbook to be better!
But our school forks over hundreds of thousands of dollars for the kickbacks, er, I mean "award winning textbooks".
Oh, and another thing: Most modern textbooks come with online versions, multimedia files, etc. These are the flaming turds of the education world. The chemistry textbook we use comes with an online version that will NOT function on any Apple products (computers, phones, tablets...nada). And on PCs? It's about 50-50. It's crashy, buggy, and depends on what precise version of Adobe Acrobat you have installed (with newer versions almost invariably not opening the textbook). The reason is obvious: An online version that could be easily copied would lead to piracy. Duh.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Monday November 16 2015, @05:12PM
University education (and really public education, too) is about one thing, and one thing only: Separating you from your money. I'm a high school teacher
Presumably to become a high school teacher you obtained some form of university education. In which case please explain how universities are about one thing and one thing only? Try getting a medical license without a university education. And try not to kill people by pretending to be a doctor and using wikipedia as your reference, for example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @05:30PM
No need. Apparently you can just make shit up and continue practicing medicine:
http://www.cancerletter.com/articles/20151113_2 [cancerletter.com]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday November 16 2015, @07:30PM
It seems to me that you could both be correct. They can't separate you from your money if they don't actually teach you enough to get into your job. Or more specifically, they teach you whatever you are willing to pay them for. Whether that is medicine, cooking, teaching, or whatever.
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(Score: 1) by pipedwho on Tuesday November 17 2015, @01:45AM
The problem is that the universities/schools get paid even if the student never finds a job. The universities aren't the ones lending out the money that ends up paying for the education.
There would be an instant change of focus if universities were only allowed to be paid as the students entered the workforce and repaid the loans. No ongoing work, no ongoing loan repayments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @02:17AM
Don't encourage this mentality that colleges and universities are there so people can get jobs. They are primarily there as a tool that people can use to attain a deep academic understanding of the universe around them. People who go there so they can make lots of money or get good jobs shouldn't be there to begin with, as they only poison the educational environment with their shallow personalities and encourage schools to become more like trade schools to appease them, which decreases real education.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday November 17 2015, @02:54PM
You've got it backwards. Companies want to hire people with degrees over those without. That is the driving force to use colleges and universities as a mechanism to get a job. I've yet to work for a company that wanted its workers to have a deep academic understanding of the universe around them. They just want people who aren't idiots. A degree seems to raise the bar enough and save HR the effort of actually finding out if someone is worth hiring.
Trust me when i say that i am very against companies using formal education as a tool to filter out applicants.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2015, @01:26AM
But that still doesn't justify all the people who treat colleges and universities as mere trade schools; which, yes, includes employers. Real education suffers as a result.
A degree seems to raise the bar enough and save HR the effort of actually finding out if someone is worth hiring.
Not from what I've seen. Plenty of complete morons have degrees, and it's because the standards of most colleges and universities just don't match up to the ones at the top. Further, this only continues to get worse as these colleges and universities strive to be more like trade schools so they can get more money from ignorant people who don't care about education and just have shallow goals.
Properly screening applicants might be more difficult, but relying on degrees will actually allow more fools to slip through because clueless HR drones let their guards down thinking that they must be good because they have a degree. This is a costly mistake.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2015, @12:32AM
Other countries skip a university education and specialize in medicine earlier. How useful is knowledge in American History or Literature when you are a surgeon?
Three extra years of specialized medical training, which could also include relevant courses in humanities or whatever, would be more useful.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Tuesday November 17 2015, @02:11AM
Obviously I learned a few things in college, and a few more in my master's degree. But in the first semester of my bachelor's degree I spent $520 on books, and another $500 on fees. That textbook was decades old, and had only minor modifications from its original form. And this was 20 years ago, mind you.
I don't have a problem paying for education. But I was 18 and stupid...and they knew that. They took advantage of my ignorance, as they do for so many young people, and fleeced me at every possible chance.
And the reality is that I had no choice. Sure, I could have gone to a less expensive college, but at the possible chance of not being hired. And the books are pretty much the same at every school. Some profs assigned specific homework / reading from the books. I even remember (laughably) that ONE copy of the textbook was kept to be checked out in the library...for a class of over 3,000 students.
So, to sum up: They are a business, a business with a monopoly on the sheets of paper people who want to be teachers / doctors / lawyers / etc. must have in order to practice their chosen profession. This enables them to massively overcharge for the services they render.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @04:38PM
I stopped getting textbooks altogether by the end. You can just study from the notes and internet.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday November 16 2015, @04:44PM
I've heard that some classes require you to buy books which come with access codes for some website you'll be forced to use for the class. A lot of the assignments are done through said website, so if you don't use it, you'll probably fail or get a bad grade.
So while that is a good idea, it's not always an option.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 16 2015, @05:50PM
Yes - I spent an entire day with my eldest son, trying to get one of those sites to work. It just wouldn't. When he got back to campus, he spent another day trying to unlock it, and failed. Someone finally showed him how to hack the frigging site. Perfectly valid codes didn't work, but a hack worked.
Kinda like gaming and DRM DVD's?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 16 2015, @05:57PM
Yes, this exactly. Basically, they are practicing some sneaky, underhanded censorship.
For instance, I generally oppose abortion. I've seen books that go out of their way to suggest that abortion is a good idea. Others pretty openly condemn abortion.
It's SCHOOL FFS. The school has no right to promote abortion, or to condemn it. Keep Planned Parenthood out of the classroom, and keep the preacher out of the classroom too. Just teach the FACTS. And, that means all the facts. The part that PP leaves out, are the emotional scars suffered by a lot of women after an abortion. The part that the preacher leaves out, are those women whose lives are threatened by pregnancy, and those women who have terribly deformed babies, and those women who are pregnant due to incest or rape.
Present the facts, then STFU - not just PP, but those who are on my side too. Each and every girl/woman has to make her own damned decisions in life.
(Score: 1) by FreeUser on Monday November 16 2015, @07:43PM
The part that PP leaves out, are the emotional scars suffered by a lot of women after an abortion.
Factually incorrect. Very few women regret, or are emotionally scarred, when choosing to abort an unwanted pregnancy.
http://time.com/3956781/women-abortion-regret-reproductive-health/ [time.com]
The "emotional scars" of abortion are largely a myth. Unfortunately, the emotional (and economic) scars of being forced to carry an unwanted child to term are well documented, and becoming all too common as access to affordable abortions becomes increasingly rare in large swathes of the United States.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy, a Novel
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 16 2015, @07:55PM
Alright - it appears that we each have our biases.
http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/studentsforlife/cost.html [colorado.edu]
http://www.abort73.com/testimony/ [abort73.com]
https://avemariaradio.net/actually-women-do-regret-their-abortions/ [avemariaradio.net]
http://www.lovematters.com/women.htm [lovematters.com]
Who do I believe - the people who are selling abortions, or the women who have voiced regrets?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Monday November 16 2015, @06:52PM
Now I assume the textbook websites actually could be useful but I doubt it. As counterpoint I had a few teachers that established their own sites where you could interact for homework. You would get a problem set, type the answer back in and get instantly graded. If you got less than 100% you could keep doing sets until you got a perfect score. it was a nice way to get the right things done like quicker feedback, better grades, additional chances and all the practice problems you could want.
With the open textbooks already written, I would love to see we supporters of openness develop accompanying websites for courses. My courses above were math centric and I know someone here could do it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Dunbal on Monday November 16 2015, @04:48PM
I expect some heavy, heavy lobbying from publishers to try to suppress open textbooks. God forbid that knowledge not have to be paid for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @05:14PM
Lets see... RIAA, MPAA, and soon to be in your classroom... TBAA.
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Monday November 16 2015, @06:59PM
I expect some heavy, heavy lobbying from publishers to try to suppress open textbooks. God forbid that knowledge not have to be paid for.
That already happened, and has pretty well played itself out. This BYU study pretty much assures such an effort will fall on deaf ears.
But what will happen is that these open knowledge textbooks will be inundated with "plugins" similar to how browser plugins appeared for Chrome or Firefox, especially in fast moving fields. Without some curation, some will be good, some will be horrible, and some will lead to lawsuits. Embrace, extend and extinguish all over again. And significant numbers of instructors will not be able to tell the good from the bad.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 16 2015, @04:52PM
This because the textbooks schoolchildren read are often used to convey political propaganda to eager, open minds.
One way we could avoid this problem would be for individual teachers to select their textbooks, rather than entire states. In Newfoundland, the students purchase their own books then keep them, much as American college students do.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Monday November 16 2015, @07:04PM
This because the textbooks schoolchildren read are often used to convey political propaganda to eager, open minds.
We are talking about college textbooks. Schoolchildren are not involved here.
Individual teachers do no better at selecting texts than do individual colleges. The problem is the students are going to get indoctrinated one way or the other. At least when the college selects the texts it becomes obvious what the slant is. But when Ms Ragina Hormona selects a text for her section of PoliSci 101 the newbies have little advanced knowledge
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by krishnoid on Tuesday November 17 2015, @02:05AM
Only if you're lucky [textbookleague.org]:
The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by WillAdams on Monday November 16 2015, @05:16PM
This brings us full circle, to the origins of the WWW (anyone who hasn't read _Weaving the Web_ by TBL should).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday November 16 2015, @05:35PM
please do a study about why Microsoft products are a necessity in Education. My daughter couldn't use open source software to write her documents in case there was a formatting error when the Teacher/Prof opened it using MS Weird version4.ass.2 or whatever.
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to influence education. But money talks and free walks.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 16 2015, @06:02PM
If you'll remember, Apple opened that particular Pandora's box. Hard to believe it's 20 years ago now, but I remember when all the schools around Dallas scrapped their aging Mac machines. Many were free from Apple, and all of them seriously discounted, when the schools bought them. Gates wasn't blind, nor was he stupid. He out-gave Apple about 100 to 1, and all the schools became Micro-centric.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 16 2015, @07:19PM
What apple gave to schools was never a requirement, simply indoctrination in the lower grades, and pretty useless beyond Middle School. It did induce a lot of sales, but teachers in grade schools weren't demanding papers written on these machines.
But requiring a specific software version of a specific companies commercial package so that students can turn in digital versions of papers (other than PDFs), is another whole level of lock-in. True, you could often get a student license for next to nothing, but you had to run out and buy a computer capable of running it.
(Side note: It just seems ridiculous that any instructor would wan't anything except paper. How do you keep your machine virus free while accepting thumbdrives or email attachments from hundreds of students?. )
I suspect most of that requirement for digital versions is so the instructor can run each paper through Plagiarism Detection [wikipedia.org] software.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday November 17 2015, @12:12AM
Side note: It just seems ridiculous that any instructor would wan't anything except paper. How do you keep your machine virus free while accepting thumbdrives or email attachments from hundreds of students?
I did it by running GNU/Linux only on my laptop or dual booting my school supplied* laptop and doing all assignment assessment after booting Linux. Although it was dozens, not hundreds, in my case.
*IT's response was always something like "Use windows to go to the intranet because we're too short of time to give everybody individual certificates, but dual booting's fine. We'll reimage it when you give the computer back. Just as a matter of interest, which distro are you using?" I may have been lucky in my choice of schools.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @06:42PM
What are you talking about? I had friends who used nothing but Linux back in the late 90s, early 200s for all of their years in college with no issues even when the professor wanted MS Word docs.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday November 16 2015, @07:37PM
I remember that at the time plenty of office suites could write ms office 97 files. That changed after a few years.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by SanityCheck on Monday November 16 2015, @07:06PM
The few books I needed for my CS courses (Mostly discrete math) I would take with me to the grave. Rest required no books.
Of course because even a Technical Institute wants to give you that "all around" education that makes you want to sleep, I had to buy ton of useless books for some Humanities course. One of which was co-written by the Professor, and was $35.
The Math department was ancient and they didn't care how old your book was, I think I used slides only for most of it. But I took Calc 1-3 in Community College, where I think I had the best deal on a book ever. Bought new for about $150, came with free year of Amazon Prime ($75) and mind you I used the hell out of Prime so it was actual savings. Used it for 3 classes and sold it back to Amazon for $90 credit, they even gave me free shipping.
Physics was deeply in the pockets of Big Books, they required online homework submissions for the core physics classes, which meant you had to get the code. Luckily I took Physics I in community college (should have taken 2 as well).
Management school did require some book for homework, I had to rent e-book because otherwise it was $180, biggest scam I ever seen.
It really does depend on the department. And to lesser extent on the Professor. I definitely would not spend $150 or more for a book. I don't care what who says.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 16 2015, @07:39PM
One of which was co-written by the Professor, and was $35.
Ah, the good old days.
Many of my courses required texts written by one (or more) of the professors, and they were all in cahoots requiring each other's books. Prices seemed high at the time, but nothing compared to these days. Its how the professors made money and satisfied "publish or perish" back in the day.
Heh, as a freshman, I still remember being impressed that I got to take the course from the guy who "wrote the book".
Two years later, while researching something in the library (before the www), I discovered entire sections of that book were lifted word for word from other books written by other professors at different universities with nothing more than a vague citation in the bibliography. I assume it was a mutually agreed upon back scratching exercise.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @10:48PM
First-year calculus should be a good example because the subject matter hasn't changed in over 100 years. The standard assumption for prerequisites is that students have studied elementary algebra, analytic geometry and trigonometry but have little or no prior exposure to calculus.
Two of the standard commercial textbooks, which have gone through many revisions, are Larson/Edwards and Thomas.
What is the best FOSS competition?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 16 2015, @11:09PM
It isn't FOSS, but my preferred book is this [nostarch.com].