Open Textbooks, Cost, and Value | The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

"On Thursday, I heard an inspiring talk by David Ernst of the University of Minnesota. He’s the CIO of their College of Education and Human Development and an open educational resource activist. His talk to at UND focused on the importance of open textbooks and was part of a larger 'open educational resources seminar' put on by UND’s working group for open access resources.  The main thrust of Ernst’s talk was that textbooks cost too much and this has had real implication on the quality of education at American universities. You can check out his slides from the talk here. He makes the point that textbooks were the one area of cost in higher education that faculty could control ... This is where I began to rankle a bit. I think (and in a very engaging conversation with him afterward, more or less confirmed) that Prof. Ernst conflated the cost of the textbook with its value. As I told him, my experience was that students are just as willing to not read a free or a very inexpensive textbook (and I provide one in some of my classes) as a textbook that cost more money. Moreover, a video that shows a student remarking that he sometimes had to wait until late at night to use a textbook that he shared with a few other students seemed a bit disingenuous. After all, college students have access to copiers, scanners, and – most importantly – smart phones which make it possible to copy and distribute printed material instantly and at a minuscule cost (or, if nothing else, using technologies already at hand). While many of these techniques are strictly illegal, I can’t believe that something as relatively arcane as copyright law (particularly unenforceable copyright law!) would stop a student from making a copy of a book for personal use especially when the alternative is doing poorly in a class or losing out on precious sleep.  My suspicion, then, is that cost alone is not the factor that is driving frustration over textbook costs and leading students to avoid buying them or engaging in strategies that might appear academically questionable. I think the issue is that textbooks are declining in value to students ..."