Battle over college course material is a textbook example of technological change - The Washington Post

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-04-15

Summary:

"Brandan Hudgins, an engineering student at Virginia’s Tidewater Community College, has used traditional textbooks and electronic books. He has paid for digital codes to get homework assignments and, sometimes, gotten free, unlimited access to texts. This is the mix-and-match world of course materials that confronts today’s college students. Hudgins has paid as much as $625 a semester and as little as $200. A revolution in college course materials is raising questions about cost, access and fairness. Publishers say their high-tech courseware — electronic books glowing with videos and interactive study guides — can improve the quality of learning at a small fraction of the cost of traditional textbooks. But student advocates call for adoption of open-source textbooks that can be downloaded for free, and worry that the same companies that drove up the price of print textbooks are dominating the digital space and will ultimately introduce higher costs there.

Now, Congress has stepped into the fray by committing $5 million in the fiscal 2018 budget to support the creation or expansion of open textbooks on college campuses. The money is the first major investment by the federal government in open-source materials and could advance the movement.

The tension between publishers and advocates is rooted in what is widely viewed as a broken model of textbook pricing. The cost of print textbooks soared 65 percent in the past decade, although prices are beginning to moderate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Academic publishers have maximized profits from college textbooks by setting high prices to recoup their investment and to offset limited sales...."

Link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/battle-over-college-course-material-is-a-textbook-example-of-technological-change/2018/04/14/fb3d0394-0db5-11e8-95a5-c396801049ef_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e78be0a328e7

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.usa oa.hei oa.oer oa.education oa.textbooks oa.courseware oa.students oa.access oa.prices oa.government oa.funding oa.policies oa.legislation oa.publishers oa.costs oa.sustainability oa.books oa.economics_of

Date tagged:

04/15/2018, 12:56

Date published:

04/15/2018, 08:57