At most universities, students are essentially forced to purchase a large number of overpriced
textbooks.
The system has been set up to benefit the textbook companies – not the students.
In an ideal world, a student that attends university should be provided with all the
materials and tools they need in order to graduate.
Textbooks are a scam.
Dirty Tactics
There are a number of techniques that textbook publishers use in order to “encourage”
students to purchase their textbooks.
1.
Revised Editions.
Textbook companies love releasing new editions of their textbooks.
Often there is very little difference between editions.
With the addition of a few new pictures, a new colourful cover, and a new layout or design,
it’s easy to convince students and staff that the new textbook is superior to previous
editions.
This semester, one of my students has been told that he must use the 16th edition of
the textbook.
The 15th edition, published in 2015, is out of date!
2.
Reorganised Chapters.
A very simple tactic is to reorder the chapters.
This doesn’t sound like it would do very much, but imagine if every week your professor
asks you to read, for example, p. 317, second paragraph.
If you are using anything but the latest edition of the textbook, this becomes very tiresome
very quickly.
Even if they ask you to read the second section of chapter 8, it would still require you to
work out which chapter corresponds with chapter 8 of the new edition.
It’s an unwanted workload that most students would simply just avoid.
3.
Resale Sabotage.
As a consequence of all the changes between textbook editions, it’s very hard to resell
your old textbooks.
I know, I have a bunch of them at home that I simply cannot sell.
The information in them is still valid.
For example, calculus, as a concept, doesn’t change very much over the years, however my
calculus textbook is no longer used in universities, so consequently is unsellable.
I have no need for it any more as I can simply look online to find the answers to any of
my calculus queries.
4.
Lack of Digital Material.
In general, textbooks are still printed on paper.
Yes, I know it’s 2017 where every student has either a laptop or a tablet, but despite
this, publishers refuse to hand out PDFs.
I assume their fear is that if they give a PDF to one student, then that student will
hand it out to all of their friends, consequently destroying demand for the textbook.
5.
Teachers Publishing Their Own Textbooks.
Yes, many professors are actually the authors of their own textbooks.
Obviously they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
You’re Blind?
Tough Luck Pal!
A couple of my students are blind (see my post Political Correctness Gone Mad for the
politically correct term).
Obviously a person who can’t see has no use for physical textbooks.
However, this is not what the textbook publishers think.
One of my students, let’s call him Paul, was forced to buy all of his physical textbooks
at a cost of about $400.
The reason given was that the only way for the company to give him access to the e-books
was if he bought the physical books to get their sealed “access codes”.
He said he was willing to pay for the e-books directly, but apparently that was not an option.
Now what sort of company wants to force a blind person to buy a paper-based textbook?
I’ll tell you who – a greedy company!
Luckily for Paul, the university came to its senses and decided to refund his money.
It’s lucky that he hadn’t already unwrapped the books as that would have made the refund
impossible.
The university spent the next few weeks negotiating with the publishers to see if they could get
hold of some e-books.
Only two of them came through with any sort of digital material.
The others are apparently just ignoring the request.
But it didn’t end there.
The material provided by one of the companies was an e-book that could only be accessed
via their website using an access code.
The thing is, Paul has to use a screen-reader to read computer text for him, but the online
content is not text-based!
It’s displayed as an image that the screen-reader cannot read.
We thought we might be able to print the material to a text-based PDF, but the company only
allows 30 pages to be printed per account!
So he managed to download one chapter, but clearly that’s not adequate.
It turned out that the printed PDF also could not be read by the screen-reader.
We tried converting it using an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program, but the textbook
company had done some manipulation to the text so that it could not be read.
Bottom line is that textbook companies don’t want people to be able to copy their textbooks
in a digital format.
They’re dead scared that any digital material will immediately be published on the likes
of The Pirate Bay.
Paul and I had to resort to scanning each page of the textbook manually and convert
the image to text using OCR.
The result isn’t great as there are many pictures in textbooks that have strangely
formatted text, headings in funny positions, as well as tables and the like that use a
plethora of different styles.
OCR can only do so much.
Open Textbooks
So what can we do about the textbook problem?
There are a couple of options, both of which involve the textbook companies giving up some
(or all) of their revenue.
1.
Open Textbooks.
The premise is simple.
In the same vein as Wikipedia, teachers around the world could contribute to a global “Calculus”
book, or “Anthropology” book, etc.
This would send textbook prices plummeting and allow the latest information to be added
to textbooks as required.
Some would argue that quality would be sacrificed (for example, online vandals might publish
questionable “facts”), but I think ultimately we would be able to iron out any kinks and
create a truly marvellous library of open textbooks.
2.
Publishers’ Model.
With pressure from universities as well as the government, publishers could be compelled
to change their model so that it favours students.
Generation Y no longer need printed material.
They are just as happy using a computer or tablet as they are reading a book.
Producing a 700 page hard-cover textbook is expensive and a waste of resources.
Creating digital material is cheap.
The choice is obvious – we just need someone to have the courage to stand up against the
textbook companies.
3.
Protest.
Students and like-minded staff need to protest the ridiculous expense involved in the textbook
industry.
Change will only come about if people get angry.
If textbook publishers see that their model is failing and customers are leaving, they’ll
change – I guarantee it.
Education should be free.
It benefits society as a whole.
To not only charge students for their education, but then to expect them to purchase expensive
hard-cover textbooks – it’s bordering on criminal.
We need to stop these thieves whose goal isn’t to help society, but to line their own pockets.
I'll finish with a quote from American entrepreneur, Eli Broad:
"How absurd that our students tuck their cell phones, BlackBerrys, iPads, and iPods into
their backpacks when they enter a classroom and pull out a tattered textbook."