CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Textbooks: education’s long con  Fri Sep 05, 2008 2:46 am | |
| Technology is the key to release us from our academic bondage
We are in the midst of a technological revolution. E-mails have replaced letters. Text messaging is used more than phone conversations and we download instead of purchase music. Some of us spend more time streaming videos on YouTube than in front of a television. Typical newspaper classifieds are far outnumbered by the listings on Craigslist. It’s time we change the way we get textbooks. Previously, college students were powerless to do anything about high textbook prices. It’s time we shake up the industry and develop alternatives to killing trees as well as our checking accounts.
The Sept. 2 Evergreen article titled, “High textbook prices have some steaming,” cited that students spend, on average, nearly $1000 on textbooks a year. None of this is the fault of local bookstores, it’s the publishers who take nearly two-thirds of the profit. They are the ones we need to combat.
There are obvious ways to ease the cost of traditional textbooks. You could check online and buy the international version, borrow a sample copy, purchase the electronic version, use the library or even decide which books are absolutely necessary before shopping. But these methods only place buckets under a leaky roof. We need to repair the water holes.
Option number one: The Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is an e-book reader which has flew off the virtual shelves of Amazon since its inception a mere 10 months ago. The Kindle is a powerful device, with a high resolution and paper-like screen, wireless connectivity and thin design. Reading text off a machine may seem cumbersome initially, but so was Apple’s idea of storing music in $500 bricks on which you could download music without a computer. An e-book reader cuts the middle man, shipping costs and, theoretically, most of the publishing costs which go into a typical textbook. Yes, you probably can’t transfer books onto your friend’s Kindle, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Option number two is even more interesting. It explores the possibilities of open source. Imagine if electronic copies of textbooks were available for free consumption on a laptop, tablet PC or Kindle. There might be advertisements in between chapters to support server costs, but probably not. If scholars are willing to contribute some of their time in the interest of accessible knowledge in an environment where information could be modified, we could produce high quality text in a controlled setting. Look at the success experienced by Firefox and Wikipedia. We check Wikipedia before we do Britannica, and most individuals know Firefox is superior to Internet Explorer. Open source is generally the accepted method in producing high quality products with individually low resources.
Finally, option three. We see what may be the most obvious method in lowering textbook prices: Get rid of them altogether. Ron Hammond, a Utah Valley State College professor, removed textbooks from his curriculum after requiring his students to buy expensive textbooks which they couldn’t sell back. Now, Hammond assigns reading material from articles and research found in the library or on the Web. While the jury is out on the effectiveness for the students academically, it certainly encourages them to develop research skills and lightens the financial burden. If embraced by enough instructors, it could transmit a not-so-cordial message to the textbook industry that tripling prices over two decades is unacceptable.
If we are truly fed up with the way the textbook industry treats us, we need the assistance of our faculty and administrators. Technology that wasn’t possible a few years ago is now on the horizon. The only question is whether WSU will lead the drive to innovation or follow other universities in the transition from physical to digital text.
http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/26019 |
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