California Passes Bill to Create Open-Source Digital Library

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

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Some of the biggest expense associated with higher education is purchasing textbooks for classes. The California Senate is addressing that problem to ease the financial burden on students and family by passing a bill authorizing the state to provide students access to a free digital textbook library.

California would establish a faculty-run council called the California Open Education Resources Council (COERC) to select and develop the free digital textbooks for students at state universities and community colleges.
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Hey! Free textbooks!!

That's a great idea since it costs a stupid amount of money to pay for college textbooks already and most of them are pretty much useless after the course is over. I have a growing mountain of books in my closet that I have to buy and I haven't looked at any of them after the end of the course unless the next course requires the same book as part of like a two part series.
 
They will have to write these books themselves, license them, or use books that are being given away for cheap or free anyway. Great idea, but how do you implement without ending up in court for copyright infringement, as well as maintaining a high level of quality?
 
This takes away the funding of text books from the consumers of those books. Which means

1) you'll never get new text books, or
2) new text books will be sponsored primarily by 'foundations' aka super rich or governments or God knows who and I'm sure they won't try to mix a little bias or revisionism in there.

Beautiful way to take funding for new books out of the hands of the public and into the hands of special interests with a filter applied by the government. What can go wrong?
 
Colleges don't like the second hand textbook market so they created this fucked up "access code" system that forces the student to essentially pay full price. You can otherwise find dirt cheap college books, but the access code prices are through the roof.

REALLY fucked up.
 
This is big news! I think we will be seeing more and more virtual libraries in the future.
 
jpm100 said:
This takes away the funding of text books from the consumers of those books. Which means

1) you'll never get new text books, or
2) new text books will be sponsored primarily by 'foundations' aka super rich or governments or God knows who and I'm sure they won't try to mix a little bias or revisionism in there.

Beautiful way to take funding for new books out of the hands of the public and into the hands of special interests with a filter applied by the government. What can go wrong?
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It might not take too much money to convince some college professor to write a book. Most of them want to become published writers anyway and getting published doesn't mean you have to pay the author a lot of money (really...I'm sure sure the author doesn't get much of the monetary returns for a book...really :( ) so it won't cost overly much or require someone with megawealth to pay for it.

PornoSatan said:
Colleges don't like the second hand textbook market so they created this fucked up "access code" system that forces the student to essentially pay full price. You can otherwise find dirt cheap college books, but the access code prices are through the roof.

REALLY fucked up.
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+1 It sucks to even buy used books because of how some colleges attempt to regulate the secondary market. :(
 
This is a touchy subject.

On one hand - colleges make contracts with book makers - hence they have to jack up prices and professors are forced to use X textbook because X textbook is the the college is contracted to use. They jack up the price of paper to billions in profits, etc.. and there is no place for a poor student to turn.


So this KIND OF seems like a good idea, but you need to put yourselves into the book maker - you want profits. thats what you aim for. We can't always play the "what makes it cheaper for the american public game". Try starting your own business and see how important it is to you.
 
The 'access code' system Colleges are using really opened up my eyes, glorified money making racket on students. Fuck that shit
 
PornoSatan said:
The 'access code' system Colleges are using really opened up my eyes, glorified money making racket on students. Fuck that shit
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Can someone describe the access code system to me? I'm guessing you are talking e-books or something? :confused:

I will never be converted to e-book, by the way.
 
SkribbelKat said:
It might not take too much money to convince some college professor to write a book. Most of them want to become published writers anyway and getting published doesn't mean you have to pay the author a lot of money (really...I'm sure sure the author doesn't get much of the monetary returns for a book...really :( ) so it won't cost overly much or require someone with megawealth to pay for it.
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With, digital distribution like Amazon, Kobo, etc.... The cost of digital publishing is pennies to a few dollars. If it was publishing that was the problem on cost, cheap textbooks would be already available.

Not all textbooks are regurgitations of past textbooks. We're talking people giving away the knowledge that is the basis of their livelihood. Not only the effort to acquire it, but their future exclusivity. And that's with tiny sales volume. Its not millions of copies, its maybe 10,000 copies. They aren't going to give it away for free.
 
This might be a good thing depending on the quality. First, tenured professors are usually not forced to use any books by their university. They can use any books they want from their own to e-sources to handouts. Second, most professors don't write books for public consumption because they are not looked upon favorably by their profession (either to qualify for tenure or grants) they write monographs which are completely different animals. Of course, this varies by discipline and public or private.

Adjuncts get a little more pressure on them to tow the university line but even they are usually free in most of their choices. It just comes down to laziness. The textbook industry sells recommendations to the college bookstore, the college bookstore gives those rec's to the dept, the dept gives those to the instructors. It makes it easy to order for the entire dept if everyone just "checks the default box" and orders the recommended texts without even looking at it beforehand.

Not all prof's are this lazy though. I know a few of my colleagues make it a point to use CC sources to cut down on the cost of books. The effort is hardly returned or appreciated by the students though in my experience. I know when I TA'ed some classes, I made it a point to mention that all it takes is to come to office hours and either I or the proffessor will help track down the resources for this or that class for free or at least considerably cheaper... of a class of 120ish, guess how many students took me up on that offer? If mommy and daddy are paying why do all that extra work when you can just order all your books through the bookstore and pick them up all at one time and at one location?
 
jpm100 said:
With, digital distribution like Amazon, Kobo, etc.... The cost of digital publishing is pennies to a few dollars. If it was publishing that was the problem on cost, cheap textbooks would be already available.

Not all textbooks are regurgitations of past textbooks. We're talking people giving away the knowledge that is the basis of their livelihood. Not only the effort to acquire it, but their future exclusivity. And that's with tiny sales volume. Its not millions of copies, its maybe 10,000 copies. They aren't going to give it away for free.
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The expense of digital publishing hasn't got anything to do with how much the publishing company passes along to the author for the work. Honestly, a lot of fiction writers end up earning money by showing up for book signings or consulting with others in open forums. Going to one usually means making a little extra income (a few hundred to a few thousand depending on the fame and ego of the writer and what people will endure paying them for their physical presence). That supplemental income is important for a writer who isn't a NYT best seller with a well-known name. Many end up writing on the side and doing something else to pay most of their bills unless they become a publisher's golden child of the moment like J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.

We're not talking about giving away cutting edge research here. These are community college texts which don't exactly contain anything that isn't broadly known by anyone else with a degree.
 
SkribbelKat said:
It sucks to even buy used books because of how some colleges attempt to regulate the secondary market. :(
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It's more complicated than it appears. The universities have relationships with publishers, which ends up "paying" a bit of your education, in the same way Microsoft pays OEM's to put Windows on their machines or AOL pays for their software to be pre-installed, etc., which lowers the retail cost of the machine for you. It's a form of subsidization whereby you end up paying the same overall, but less in tuition, so the person who actually ends up paying more is the person with the more expensive overall book load. Doesn't that sound like how it should be?

Don't get me wrong, I think the textbook industry is a sham. I'm just stating that people tend to simplify these issues, which only makes their solutions irrelevant, and we get back to square one when trying to solve the problem. The real problem is a cartel mentality among publishers, high education costs for the university, and the reliance on tenured professors for the students. The combination creates an environment where this sort of thing is standard policy.
 
Maxx said:
It's more complicated than it appears. The universities have relationships with publishers, which ends up "paying" a bit of your education, in the same way Microsoft pays OEM's to put Windows on their machines or AOL pays for their software to be pre-installed, etc., which lowers the retail cost of the machine for you. It's a form of subsidization whereby you end up paying the same overall, but less in tuition, so the person who actually ends up paying more is the person with the more expensive overall book load. Doesn't that sound like how it should be?

Don't get me wrong, I think the textbook industry is a sham. I'm just stating that people tend to simplify these issues, which only makes their solutions irrelevant, and we get back to square one when trying to solve the problem. The real problem is a cartel mentality among publishers, high education costs for the university, and the reliance on tenured professors for the students. The combination creates an environment where this sort of thing is standard policy.
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I didn't realize there was any subsidizing going on behind the scenes, but it's odd that has anything at all to do with the secondary sales market. Also, if only part of the cost is offset, course tuition might rise, but the complete lack of book prices would more than make up for the price of the book plus subsidized tuition, I would think.
 
Cali has over $18 Billion in Debt and its also firing state employee's left and right... instead of focusing on how to deal with that huge looming debt , they are wasting money on an open source digital library?


Sigh.
 
Cyraxx said:
This is a touchy subject.

On one hand - colleges make contracts with book makers - hence they have to jack up prices and professors are forced to use X textbook because X textbook is the the college is contracted to use. They jack up the price of paper to billions in profits, etc.. and there is no place for a poor student to turn.
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False, as a college professor... in California at that. I get to essentially decide which textbooks my class uses, well my department as a whole does and it's not because of any sort of collusion with the textbook makers. Hell I almost wish the school got a piece of the profit of doing this because I get hounded by textbook reps consistently at the end of every semester having them trying to push their book into my class.

As to the jacking up the price, depends upon the school, mine doesn't jack up prices at all, they're literally selling at break even. Funding for paying people to work at the bookstore comes out of the school's general budget, and overall isn't that much. You can't get the book cheaper on Amazon, unless it's a used copy. Textbooks are expensive because there is a tiny market for them, as a result they will not get sales of numbers to bring down the per unit cost.

Although this is a bit of a touchy subject to be sure, mostly because how the budget for California schools has been slashed consistently over the past few years, tuition rates have been increased as a direct result, yet oh hey lets spend more money so everyone gets free textbooks, considering we literally doubled their tuition costs over the past 3 years.
 
Geez...all California needs to do is fund one more stupid thing for the good of 'college kids' who can't even hold down a job when they do graduate. Yep...that will sure help California stop wasting my federal tax dollars and get their budget back in the green. It's bad enough the feds let slackers default on their college loans...but now we pay for their e-books too?

I guess that clerk running the bookstore should start looking for a new job about now.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Textbooks are expensive because there is a tiny market for them, as a result they will not get sales of numbers to bring down the per unit cost..
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That and the fact a certain captive audience of idiots...err...students have to buy them, regardless of the price.

The real reason they are expensive: It's big business. Everything about colleges and universities is big business and politics. (according to my dad, who just retired as the head professor of industrial electronics, here at the local state college in Jacksonville).
 
SkribbelKat said:
Hey! Free textbooks!!

That's a great idea since it costs a stupid amount of money to pay for college textbooks already and most of them are pretty much useless after the course is over. I have a growing mountain of books in my closet that I have to buy and I haven't looked at any of them after the end of the course unless the next course requires the same book as part of like a two part series.
Click to expand...

I sell my books at the end of semester (on Amazon, not back to the rip-you-off bookstores) for about 85% of what I paid. :)

I'm surprised the book industry isn't fighting this proposal tooth and nail.
 
BBA said:
The real reason they are expensive: It's big business. Everything about colleges and universities is big business and politics. (according to my dad, who just retired as the head professor of industrial electronics, here at the local state college in Jacksonville).
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That's exactly why they release an almost identical "edition" every other year. The professors require the latest editions, thereby squeezing the used market.

Luckily, all my professors openly said "you can buy two editions past and it'll be the same for this course" .. so my book costs dropped from $400+ to $120 total (shipped). Sometimes it's a crapshoot as to whether or not a particular old edition will still be valid, they usually are, but you never know.

Then, some of the schools even have their own books created (special editions). It's all a money scheme.
 
sfsuphysics said:
False, as a college professor... in California at that. I get to essentially decide which textbooks my class uses, well my department as a whole does and it's not because of any sort of collusion with the textbook makers. Hell I almost wish the school got a piece of the profit of doing this because I get hounded by textbook reps consistently at the end of every semester having them trying to push their book into my class.

As to the jacking up the price, depends upon the school, mine doesn't jack up prices at all, they're literally selling at break even. Funding for paying people to work at the bookstore comes out of the school's general budget, and overall isn't that much. You can't get the book cheaper on Amazon, unless it's a used copy. Textbooks are expensive because there is a tiny market for them, as a result they will not get sales of numbers to bring down the per unit cost.

Although this is a bit of a touchy subject to be sure, mostly because how the budget for California schools has been slashed consistently over the past few years, tuition rates have been increased as a direct result, yet oh hey lets spend more money so everyone gets free textbooks, considering we literally doubled their tuition costs over the past 3 years.
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Don't know about where you are, but where we are, it seems that the professor's don't always (technically) get to choose. I've had a few professor say that the textbook that was supposed to be required sucks and they tell the student not to get it and get another one or none at all.
 
For most of my classes I buy the books used on Amazon and then sell them back on Amazon for somewhere between 80-100% of the original cost. The only problem I've had is one of my classes required an access code to register for a proprietary website for weekly quizzes (yet the university offers a free course/quiz service that most of the classes use) :rolleyes: Biggest surprise? The textbook was written by the professor. The newest edition was somewhere around 150$ or more and I got one or two editions back for 20$ with no differences apart from gramatical errors and slight section numbering differences
 
Spidey329 said:
I sell my books at the end of semester (on Amazon, not back to the rip-you-off bookstores) for about 85% of what I paid. :)

I'm surprised the book industry isn't fighting this proposal tooth and nail.
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That's a good idea. I usually just keep mine. I'm sure there are some that won't do any good. I guess if someone wants them and they're someone I know, I'd just give them away.
 
BBA said:
That and the fact a certain captive audience of idiots...err...students have to buy them, regardless of the price.
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There certainly is that, but in all honesty lets see how much it would cost you to print out 400+ pages of full color hard bound text.

pothb said:
Don't know about where you are, but where we are, it seems that the professor's don't always (technically) get to choose. I've had a few professor say that the textbook that was supposed to be required sucks and they tell the student not to get it and get another one or none at all.
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Well if I wanted to change the textbook I couldn't do it because I'm not the only one who teaches this exact class, there are multiple sections of it taught by others. I tell them to buy whatever edition of the book they can find, even mentioned on for $20 on amazon, but urged them to get the Amazon Prime 2 day shipping, and warned them that what they save in money will require extra work to make sure all the homework questions are the same.
 
GORANKAR said:
They will have to write these books themselves, license them, or use books that are being given away for cheap or free anyway. Great idea, but how do you implement without ending up in court for copyright infringement, as well as maintaining a high level of quality?
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You don’t know California politicians very well.
The real purpose of this is not to actually provide anything to the schools or students.
It’s to provide high paying jobs for termed out politicians, their supporters, and union members.
 
I had a professor once that wrote the book and a workbook for the class and required them both. Book was $75 and the workbook $40. He made a point to say the workbook could be sold back if you didn't actually write in it. When I went to sell it back they offered me $2.50 to whick I scoffed and didn't take. I then tore it up in the middle of the store and tossed it in the trash saying "That's worth $2.50!" Professor was a tool no one liked.
 
ManyCowsMoo said:
For most of my classes I buy the books used on Amazon and then sell them back on Amazon for somewhere between 80-100% of the original cost. The only problem I've had is one of my classes required an access code to register for a proprietary website for weekly quizzes (yet the university offers a free course/quiz service that most of the classes use) :rolleyes: Biggest surprise? The textbook was written by the professor. The newest edition was somewhere around 150$ or more and I got one or two editions back for 20$ with no differences apart from gramatical errors and slight section numbering differences
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Exactly, like I said, glorified money making racket. Access codes are a joke.
 
Textbook costs depend in part on how large a printing run and the storage between buying periods.
Someone has to pay forbooks sitting in storage.
Printing takes lead time, as does shipping. Part of the "cost."

Digital storage/printing is much cheaper, does require ebook reader. (I expect translations might be easier too).
Unfortunately so will censorship, publishers insist books appeal to the largest audiences.
 
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