In addition to offering OER options I think there are some economic benefits of putting the text selection onto the students which also increases the competition and defeats the current flawed economics of the textbook spaces.
It's been a while since I've visited them but I'd bet the ideas are still valid in today's market:
My reference to $100 was intended to apply to a single book. It was my understanding that the buyback price was 50% and the resale price was 75%. The bookstore would only buy back books that were to be assigned again. At UND the University bookstore had competition from student organizations such as the Vets club running a parallel service. Faculty were encouraged to make a commitment to the same texts if teaching the same course in consecutive semesters. I know book reps push the latest options for a given course as this is where the profits were. The book reps would emphasize the most current info their company made available. As national booksellers became an option for students things got much more complicated and books rentals became a counter strategy.
The money ploy was something I wrote to indicate the cost to students needed to be understood within the context of the used book market. It was intended to be funny, but there was also an effort to explain that the issue was more complicated than the cost of new textbooks.
I been interested in the issue of textbook costs for some time and my original interest was in considering the actual cost that would be reasonable. Some of my thoughts considered whether the cost issue was overhyped. Here is a post I wrote to be humorous about this issue more than a decade ago. I titled the post - The beer money ploy. https://www.learningaloud.com/curmudgeonspeaks/2013/12/19/beer-money-ploy-repurposed/
Are you aware of any academic who instead of exploring alternatives to commercial textbooks has proposed changes commercial content providers could make to offer better products? How much is about cost and how much is about value?
In addition to offering OER options I think there are some economic benefits of putting the text selection onto the students which also increases the competition and defeats the current flawed economics of the textbook spaces.
It's been a while since I've visited them but I'd bet the ideas are still valid in today's market:
- https://boffosocko.com/2015/08/24/to-purchase-rent-or-pirate-the-broken-economics-of-textbooks-in-the-digital-age/
- https://boffosocko.com/2011/07/30/on-choosing-your-own-textbooks/
If you haven't printed your syllabi yet, you could experiment...
My reference to $100 was intended to apply to a single book. It was my understanding that the buyback price was 50% and the resale price was 75%. The bookstore would only buy back books that were to be assigned again. At UND the University bookstore had competition from student organizations such as the Vets club running a parallel service. Faculty were encouraged to make a commitment to the same texts if teaching the same course in consecutive semesters. I know book reps push the latest options for a given course as this is where the profits were. The book reps would emphasize the most current info their company made available. As national booksellers became an option for students things got much more complicated and books rentals became a counter strategy.
The money ploy was something I wrote to indicate the cost to students needed to be understood within the context of the used book market. It was intended to be funny, but there was also an effort to explain that the issue was more complicated than the cost of new textbooks.
I been interested in the issue of textbook costs for some time and my original interest was in considering the actual cost that would be reasonable. Some of my thoughts considered whether the cost issue was overhyped. Here is a post I wrote to be humorous about this issue more than a decade ago. I titled the post - The beer money ploy. https://www.learningaloud.com/curmudgeonspeaks/2013/12/19/beer-money-ploy-repurposed/
Are you aware of any academic who instead of exploring alternatives to commercial textbooks has proposed changes commercial content providers could make to offer better products? How much is about cost and how much is about value?