Discussion: View Thread

  • 1.  The price of Textbooks

    Posted 03-16-2009 22:56
    Hi all,
     
    I'm with Michael here...  I have also fairly recently moved to teaching in the US, and frankly, I am appalled by textbook prices... A text that would cost 25 pounds (say $40) in the UK costs $150+ here, and I can see no 'proper' reason for the disparity.
     
    I don't have an answer, but I am actively trying to design my classes here around less academic-based textbook content. 
     
    Steve
    _________________________________________________
     
    Dr Steve Leybourne Ph.D
    Metropolitan College
    Boston University
    808 Commonwealth Avenue
    BOSTON, Ma 02215
     
    Phone:   (617) 358 5626
    Fax:       (617) 353 6840
    Email:    sleyb@bu.edu
     
     

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Pirson
    Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 5:17 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts

    Hi Jim,
     
    I just wanted to chime in, as the continental European student experience regarding textbook costs is quite different. Never in my student career (including France, Germany and Switzerland) did I have to purchase a textbook costing more than USD 70. In fact, for most of my classes students screamed if they had to buy class material costing more than USD 50; despite having significantly lower tuition costs.
     
    Currently as professor in the US, I feel ashamed by the prices. One textbook alone can cost more than 150 USD..
     
    Without knowing too much about the respective structures, the results are very different..
    I think there is a lot that can be done and your experiences as textbook authors seem to confirm that the profit maximization objective just leads to squeezing the students more..
     
    Some textbook authors are using the free textbook model, used by freeload press. I understand royalties might come from advertising..
     
    Not sure what exactly can be learned from that, but I needed to say that there seem to be different models out there, and that we are not necessarily trapped in the current one...
     
    For what it is worth,
     
    Michael
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    Michael Pirson, Ph.D.
    Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business,
    Fordham University, New York
    ----------
    Lecturer, Harvard Extension School
    Research Fellow, Psychology Department, GSAS
    Harvard University
    ----------
    Co-founder Humanistic Management Network, www.humanetwork.org

    Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 4:13 PM
    Subject: Re: Open source texts

    Thanks, Sheila, exactly same experience and language with same Publisher.  Thank you for confirming.

     

    Cheers,

     

       Jim

    James G. S. Clawson

    Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business Administration

    Darden GSB,  University of Virginia

    Mail:  Box 6550  Charlottesville, VA 22906

    Packages: 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903

    Phone:  434-924-7488             Fax:  434-243-7680

    Web:  http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj/
    Podcast on Powered by Feel: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/podcasts/index.asp

     

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of S.Cameron
    Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 11:25 AM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts

     

    Jim asked whether W.Europe had similar structural problems. I can only speak from a UK perspective, and two publishers, FT-Prentice Hall for The MBA Handbook (now 6th edition) and The Business Student's Handbook (now 4th edition) and The CIPD for Practical Business Research Methods (about to appear).

     

    My experience on editorial churn is that it is similarly high. I often deal with two editors during the 9 months or so I'm allowed for a new edition, and am on my seond editor at the CIPD although we only signed the contract last autumn.

     

    I'm similarly obliged to produce new editions on demand – usually every 3rd year, though one time they shortened the interval. To be fair they do ring up and ask me nicely, but if I didn't accept nicely, I'd be in the same position of losing royalties to whoever did it in my stead.

     

    I feel that since the first edition appeared (would you believe 1991?) things have changed radically. I felt really cherished by my first editor, and that the book was a shared venture. Now it is more like being book-fodder. The publisher will cheerfully commission other books to compete with yours, as the production costs have now shifted radically towards the author. They can afford to launch several competing books and quietly drop those which don't make it.

     

    The royalties are nice, but I do worry that the costs are too high for students. And I find the 'you must do a new edition every 3 years because otherwise there are too many 2nd hand books in circulation' argument makes good commercial sense, but is not student-friendly if the subject has not moved on that much in the couple of years since the last edition appeared.

     

    Would I kill myself writing books if there were no royalties? Probably not. I only agreed to write the current one because they use a bigger publisher's sales force....

     

    Sheila Cameron

    s.cameron@open.ac.uk

     

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Clawson, Jim
    Sent: 15 March 2009 15:56
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts

     

    Dear Colleagues,

     

    There is a structural problem here in the "cost-of-textbook" issue that needs to be solved.  Text books, on average, have a smaller, captive audience.  Smaller because there's no guarantee a text will be adopted widely, and captive because students have to buy a text that is assigned.  Further, those who write textbooks usually have in their contracts that they must update their books whenever the publisher demands.  I say "demands" because going from the third to fourth edition of one of my books, the first inkling I got was a terse email from a production editor saying that my manuscript was due in four months, would I be complying.  Total news to me.  Then they said, well, if you don't write it, we can use your name and the title and get someone else to write it and charge your royalties for that cost.  True story.  Today, I cannot even contact my current editors-they change so often and all of the people I've "replied" to from emails two years ago come back "no such address." 

     

    This is similar to the big-pharma problem-how do you compensate the investment companies make on the front end if the back end is a low probability return?  Text book publishers charge high rates, even higher rates for the least popular books, so they can get their investment back.  How can we restructure that value chain? 

     

    Publishing open source books on-line is one alternative with its own issues.  The cost of printing is pushed downstream to the students.  If there's no cost to buying the book, why would anyone want to write them?  Where's the return other than the psychic return (see the related on-going flood of emails on extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation) of putting one's view out there? 

     

    One could publish on Xlibris or similar on-line services and still get a hard copy in the mail/bookstore.  They only print on demand and charge a fee for that-and there's more lead time-since there's no inventory. 

     

    Professors could take more responsibility for writing their own materials for their courses (including teaching manuals and materials), but then why re-invent the wheel is someone else has already put it down on paper?  Plus this apparently takes too much time as so many want to be handed a course complete with bells and whistles and complain if they aren't.  This preparation would take away from research time collecting data, analyzing, writing, submitting, revising, etc.  

     

    The government could specify standard texts thus reducing the number of competing texts in the market so choice would be limited and volume runs would go up thus lowering costs.  How many of us would want that?

     

    Why would anyone want to publish a textbook if they couldn't like an actuary see some "on average" return for their investment? 

     

    My conclusion is that this is a tough economic structural nut to crack-and unless we want to push the cost of printing onto students and their inefficient printers or get more oversight that limits choice so they can up their runs, we've got the system that we have. 

     

    Does anyone know what happens in the Western European world?  Do they have the same problems?  Since it's structural, my guess is yes. 

     

    Should we all  self-publish on Xlibris?  You get a little royalty, they only print on demand, and there's NO marketing involved.  At the moment this seems to be the only way to limit these high costs (less margins than costs).   But if you wrote a book, wouldn't you want a sales force out there selling it?  Wouldn't you want your book to be adopted?  Maybe you'd/we'd have to rely on our own web pages to market our texts....????

       Jim

    James G. S. Clawson

    Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business Administration

    Darden GSB, University of Virginia

    Box 6550, Charlottesville, VA 22906  

    100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903  USA

    Tel:  434 924 7488              Fax:  434 243 7680

    Web:  http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj

     

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Dr. Scott Valentine
    Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 6:36 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts

     

    Dear Michael,

     

    You've raised an issue that I think is of emerging importance. Many thanks for raising it to the group. Please forgive me but I am about to take issue with your implied support for open access in affluent nations.

     

    Although your intentions are clearly meritorious, I think if you dissected the "open source" movement from a broader perspective, you'd realize that it is potentially corrosive. If academics were to embrace open access in a scale that was large enough to influence the market for text books, current text book authors would be disincentivized to create the types of quality academic materials that one can now find in the market. Remember what text books were like 20-30 years ago? Consider how far the industry has come and what features have been added (lecture notes, CD support, video cases, embedded case studies, PowerPoint support slides etc.). This has all occurred because the venture is attractive enough for authors to commit the necessary time and for publishers to encourage supplemental material development. As a previous respondent stated, if you have any issue at all with text book prices (which I don't given the comparative value added nowadays), the issue should be with the middlemen not with the authors of text books.

     

    Excuse this light brief rant about the state of affairs in business education but....given the enormous demands that are being placed on business educators to churn out correlation studies for "top tier journals", the pool of talented text book writers is already under siege. A text book takes a enormous amount of time to put together and while compiling the work, text book writers frequently have to put up with criticism from department heads who are upset that their journal output is slipping.

     

    There are a host of other options you could pursue to minimize the financial impact of book purchases on students:

    Option 1: Provide university support (i.e. seed money, PR support) to students to encourage them to get together (nurturing teamworking skills) and form social ventures (fortifying business skills) for the purpose of earning some money to offset the cost of books.

    Option 2: Use the $100,000 you spoke of to start a not-for-profit publishing house that sells direct to the public (run by business students). By doing so you will cut out the retailer who applies large mark-ups to these materials.

    Option 3: Review how your book co-op purchases and marks up books.

    Option 4: Look at improving your second hand book program at school. Most book co-ops have buy back programs but they gouge the students during the buy back and then charge excessive prices for reselling the books.

    Option 5: Create a university fund for helping financially disadvantaged students purchase books at a discounted price.

    Option 6: Form purchasing unions in your business school to put pressure on suppliers to reduce costs. If a rep from Thompson awards contracts to publishers for the entire curriculum...they may be more apt to provide your with deeper discounts.

     

    However, if you feel strongly about open source as the way forward, then I would encourage you to consider putting together a committee to review open source materials. For every kind soul who releases a good book to open source access, there is a wannabe writer who publishes their text via open source because they cannot find a publisher to publish it.

     

    As an aside, if you posted this comment in criticism to the high price of text books in developing countries, I think you would find mass support for open access. In fact, I'd argue that it would be worthwhile to convene a workshop into how academics can band together to put pressure on publishers to exclude developing countries from generic publishing contracts in order to allow authors to print and sell their books in developing countries at cost. Publishers have compromised somewhat by printing "International Editions" which are typically soft cover versions of a US hard cover text sold at a lower price. However, the discounts for these editions are not low enough for students in developing countries to afford. This is an area that can benefit from open access.

     

    I realize that the last paragraph contradicts my position on open access somewhat but I would argue that a distinction should be drawn between supporting open access for developing countries (a hearty yes to that) and supporting open access in affluent countries (keeping option 5 above in mind).

     

    Gosh, as I read through this I realize that I may have latent Republican leanings....God help me, next thing I know I'll be advocating for intensification of off-shore oil drilling ;-).

     

    All the best,

    Scott

     

    -------------------------------------------
    Dr. Scott Victor Valentine
    Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
    National University of Singapore
    469C Bukit Timah Road
    Singapore 259772

     

    scott.valentine@nus.edu.sg
    -------------------------------------------

     

     

    ----- Original Message -----

    Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 10:46 PM

    Subject: Open source texts

     

    -- Fair warning: I'm cross-posting yet again.  When will I ever reform?

     

    Textbooks are expensive.  In Florida public universities, textbook costs rival tuition costs.  I'm currently chairing a "Textbook Affordability Initiative" at the University of South Florida to help resolve this problem (and not simply by raising tuition costs to make textbook costs appear cheaper by comparison!).  We've tried direct negotiation with a major publisher to purchase blanket access to their electronic archives (cf. library purchase agreements with journal publishers), but the price they've quoted makes it infeasible. 

     

    And so now we've turned to exploring open source textbook options and ways to use other course materials in lieu of texts.  I'd rather not recreate any wheels, should they already exist, and so I ask for your advice and experiences with open source projects, should you have any.  I don't know if the quantity and quality of open source texts is adequate.  I don't know all the challenges of incentivizing authors to release texts and course materials for open source.  I don't know all the challenges of incentivizing professors to adopt open source texts and materials for their courses.  And I don't know if I should be prepared for serious legal or other challenges from publishers who want to maintain the gravy train of privatizing a bit too much of what, in my mind at the moment, should largely be public knowledge.  And, of course, many recipients of this e-mail are also recipients of royalty payments, so what are the implications of upending this system for you?

     

    I have a perhaps overly optimistic idea that I can create a pool of funds on the order of, say, $100,000, within my university that could be used to provide grants to authors and adopters.  Where viable open source materials don't already exist, we'd offer new authors, say, $5,000 for releasing a text that at least, say, two other professors have agreed to adopt.  We'd put the text through external review, and to receive the full grant, the authors would have to agree to a few revisions to ensure the text is of adequate quality.  I'm hoping that there are enough out-of-print or unpublished texts of relevance out there that this becomes feasible without great effort.  Professors would be offered grants of, say, $500, for completing a tutorial on open source use and then adopting open source materials for a course.   I'd rely on student pressure to encourage professors to adopt open source as well.

     

    Please let me know of your experiences and your thoughts on this idea.  I'm glad to summarize for the list, should folks desire.  I currently can be reached at: mbarnett@coba.usf.edu.  

     

    ********************

    Michael L. Barnett, PhD

    University of South Florida

    College of Business Administration

    Department of Management & Organization

    4202 E. Fowler Avenue, BSN 3527

    Tampa, FL 33620-5500

    Phone: 813-974-1727

    Fax: 813-974-1734

     

    View my research on my SSRN Author page:
    <http://ssrn.com/author=414796>

     

     


    ---------------------------------
    The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).



  • 2.  The price of Textbooks

    Posted 03-17-2009 01:00
    I do have a qualified answer to the problems of textbook pricing. My
    comment is in the form of a question rather than an answer perhaps .. why
    would we ever be surprised when a monopoly acts like a monopoly? The number
    of publishing houses has greatly decreased over the last 25 years. When
    power is concentrated in a few large companies why are we surprised that
    overhead costs increase exponentially, paper shuffling costs skyrocket, and
    marginal revenue = marginal cost pricing tactics emerge?

    Perhaps I am one of the old guard who believes that students need some
    'anchor' point in their studies. I also believe that the educational /
    pedagogical value of an integrated text is directly related to the level of
    the subject/course being presented to the students. Beginning / entry level
    students (IMO) benefit from having a single 'reference' point. One, anyone,
    either student or learning facilitator / teacher / professor / tutor can
    supplement the basic guide with other things including lectures, readings,
    on line presentations, power point slides, and so on depending on the
    interest of the students and the depth and breadth of the course/subject.
    As an accounting / finance type rather than one completely immersed in
    management or strategy studies it is entirely possible that my experiences
    do not apply.

    I can only relate to the problems in curriculum design that must be faced
    early in the student's programs. E.g, in accounting principles subjects
    should the subject material centre on preparation or use of accounting
    statements? These are (IMO) anchor points of a continuum in accounting
    pedagogy and education. The same can be said for finance studies. How much
    accounting does a student of finance need to know to be a competent
    corporate finance decision maker? And that is only ONE of the many
    dimensions of finance.

    Perhaps I have drifted too far from the original premise of the question
    about textbook pricing. I apologize for that diversion. Nevertheless, I
    think that these issues are all tied together. Separation of the problems
    into discrete specialties does not (again IMO) add to the quality of the
    debates about curriculum and pedagogy, or for that matter open source texts.




    -----Original Message-----
    From: Management Education and Development Discussion
    [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Leybourne, Stephen A.
    Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 1:56 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: The price of Textbooks

    Hi all,

    I'm with Michael here... I have also fairly recently moved to teaching in
    the US, and frankly, I am appalled by textbook prices... A text that would
    cost 25 pounds (say $40) in the UK costs $150+ here, and I can see no
    'proper' reason for the disparity.

    I don't have an answer, but I am actively trying to design my classes here
    around less academic-based textbook content.

    Steve
    _________________________________________________

    Dr Steve Leybourne Ph.D
    Metropolitan College
    Boston University
    808 Commonwealth Avenue
    BOSTON, Ma 02215

    Phone: (617) 358 5626
    Fax: (617) 353 6840
    Email: sleyb@bu.edu
    Web: http://people.bu.edu/sleyb




    ________________________________

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion
    [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Pirson
    Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 5:17 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts


    Hi Jim,

    I just wanted to chime in, as the continental European student experience
    regarding textbook costs is quite different. Never in my student career
    (including France, Germany and Switzerland) did I have to purchase a
    textbook costing more than USD 70. In fact, for most of my classes students
    screamed if they had to buy class material costing more than USD 50; despite
    having significantly lower tuition costs.

    Currently as professor in the US, I feel ashamed by the prices. One textbook
    alone can cost more than 150 USD..

    Without knowing too much about the respective structures, the results are
    very different..
    I think there is a lot that can be done and your experiences as textbook
    authors seem to confirm that the profit maximization objective just leads to
    squeezing the students more..

    Some textbook authors are using the free textbook model, used by freeload
    press. I understand royalties might come from advertising..
    http://www.freeloadpress.com/

    Not sure what exactly can be learned from that, but I needed to say that
    there seem to be different models out there, and that we are not necessarily
    trapped in the current one...

    For what it is worth,

    Michael
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
    Michael Pirson, Ph.D.
    Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, Fordham University, New
    York
    ----------
    Lecturer, Harvard Extension School
    Research Fellow, Psychology Department, GSAS Harvard University
    ----------
    Co-founder Humanistic Management Network, www.humanetwork.org


    From: Clawson, Jim <mailto:ClawsonJ@DARDEN.VIRGINIA.EDU>
    Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 4:13 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts


    Thanks, Sheila, exactly same experience and language with same
    Publisher. Thank you for confirming.



    Cheers,



    Jim

    James G. S. Clawson

    Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business Administration

    Darden GSB, University of Virginia

    Mail: Box 6550 Charlottesville, VA 22906

    Packages: 100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903

    Phone: 434-924-7488 Fax: 434-243-7680

    Web: http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj/
    Podcast on Powered by Feel:
    http://www.darden.virginia.edu/podcasts/index.asp



    From: Management Education and Development Discussion
    [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of S.Cameron
    Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 11:25 AM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts



    Jim asked whether W.Europe had similar structural problems. I can only
    speak from a UK perspective, and two publishers, FT-Prentice Hall for
    The MBA Handbook (now 6th edition) and The Business Student's Handbook
    (now 4th edition) and The CIPD for Practical Business Research Methods
    (about to appear).



    My experience on editorial churn is that it is similarly high. I often
    deal with two editors during the 9 months or so I'm allowed for a new
    edition, and am on my seond editor at the CIPD although we only signed
    the contract last autumn.



    I'm similarly obliged to produce new editions on demand - usually every
    3rd year, though one time they shortened the interval. To be fair they
    do ring up and ask me nicely, but if I didn't accept nicely, I'd be in
    the same position of losing royalties to whoever did it in my stead.



    I feel that since the first edition appeared (would you believe 1991?)
    things have changed radically. I felt really cherished by my first
    editor, and that the book was a shared venture. Now it is more like
    being book-fodder. The publisher will cheerfully commission other books
    to compete with yours, as the production costs have now shifted
    radically towards the author. They can afford to launch several
    competing books and quietly drop those which don't make it.



    The royalties are nice, but I do worry that the costs are too high for
    students. And I find the 'you must do a new edition every 3 years
    because otherwise there are too many 2nd hand books in circulation'
    argument makes good commercial sense, but is not student-friendly if the
    subject has not moved on that much in the couple of years since the last
    edition appeared.



    Would I kill myself writing books if there were no royalties? Probably
    not. I only agreed to write the current one because they use a bigger
    publisher's sales force..



    Sheila Cameron

    s.cameron@open.ac.uk



    ________________________________

    From: Management Education and Development Discussion
    [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Clawson, Jim
    Sent: 15 March 2009 15:56
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts



    Dear Colleagues,



    There is a structural problem here in the "cost-of-textbook" issue that
    needs to be solved. Text books, on average, have a smaller, captive
    audience. Smaller because there's no guarantee a text will be adopted
    widely, and captive because students have to buy a text that is
    assigned. Further, those who write textbooks usually have in their
    contracts that they must update their books whenever the publisher
    demands. I say "demands" because going from the third to fourth edition
    of one of my books, the first inkling I got was a terse email from a
    production editor saying that my manuscript was due in four months,
    would I be complying. Total news to me. Then they said, well, if you
    don't write it, we can use your name and the title and get someone else
    to write it and charge your royalties for that cost. True story.
    Today, I cannot even contact my current editors-they change so often and
    all of the people I've "replied" to from emails two years ago come back
    "no such address."



    This is similar to the big-pharma problem-how do you compensate the
    investment companies make on the front end if the back end is a low
    probability return? Text book publishers charge high rates, even higher
    rates for the least popular books, so they can get their investment
    back. How can we restructure that value chain?



    Publishing open source books on-line is one alternative with its own
    issues. The cost of printing is pushed downstream to the students. If
    there's no cost to buying the book, why would anyone want to write them?
    Where's the return other than the psychic return (see the related
    on-going flood of emails on extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation) of
    putting one's view out there?



    One could publish on Xlibris or similar on-line services and still get a
    hard copy in the mail/bookstore. They only print on demand and charge a
    fee for that-and there's more lead time-since there's no inventory.



    Professors could take more responsibility for writing their own
    materials for their courses (including teaching manuals and materials),
    but then why re-invent the wheel is someone else has already put it down
    on paper? Plus this apparently takes too much time as so many want to
    be handed a course complete with bells and whistles and complain if they
    aren't. This preparation would take away from research time collecting
    data, analyzing, writing, submitting, revising, etc.



    The government could specify standard texts thus reducing the number of
    competing texts in the market so choice would be limited and volume runs
    would go up thus lowering costs. How many of us would want that?



    Why would anyone want to publish a textbook if they couldn't like an
    actuary see some "on average" return for their investment?



    My conclusion is that this is a tough economic structural nut to crack-
    and unless we want to push the cost of printing onto students and their
    inefficient printers or get more oversight that limits choice so they
    can up their runs, we've got the system that we have.



    Does anyone know what happens in the Western European world? Do they
    have the same problems? Since it's structural, my guess is yes.



    Should we all self-publish on Xlibris? You get a little royalty, they
    only print on demand, and there's NO marketing involved. At the moment
    this seems to be the only way to limit these high costs (less margins
    than costs). But if you wrote a book, wouldn't you want a sales force
    out there selling it? Wouldn't you want your book to be adopted? Maybe
    you'd/we'd have to rely on our own web pages to market our texts..????

    Jim

    James G. S. Clawson

    Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business Administration

    Darden GSB, University of Virginia

    Box 6550, Charlottesville, VA 22906

    100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA

    Tel: 434 924 7488 Fax: 434 243 7680

    Web: http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj



    From: Management Education and Development Discussion
    [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Dr. Scott Valentine
    Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 6:36 PM
    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
    Subject: Re: Open source texts



    Dear Michael,



    You've raised an issue that I think is of emerging importance. Many
    thanks for raising it to the group. Please forgive me but I am about to
    take issue with your implied support for open access in affluent
    nations.



    Although your intentions are clearly meritorious, I think if you
    dissected the "open source" movement from a broader perspective, you'd
    realize that it is potentially corrosive. If academics were to embrace
    open access in a scale that was large enough to influence the market for
    text books, current text book authors would be disincentivized to create
    the types of quality academic materials that one can now find in the
    market. Remember what text books were like 20-30 years ago? Consider how
    far the industry has come and what features have been added (lecture
    notes, CD support, video cases, embedded case studies, PowerPoint
    support slides etc.). This has all occurred because the venture is
    attractive enough for authors to commit the necessary time and for
    publishers to encourage supplemental material development. As a previous
    respondent stated, if you have any issue at all with text book prices
    (which I don't given the comparative value added nowadays), the issue
    should be with the middlemen not with the authors of text books.



    Excuse this light brief rant about the state of affairs in business
    education but....given the enormous demands that are being placed on
    business educators to churn out correlation studies for "top tier
    journals", the pool of talented text book writers is already under
    siege. A text book takes a enormous amount of time to put together and
    while compiling the work, text book writers frequently have to put up
    with criticism from department heads who are upset that their journal
    output is slipping.



    There are a host of other options you could pursue to minimize the
    financial impact of book purchases on students:

    Option 1: Provide university support (i.e. seed money, PR support) to
    students to encourage them to get together (nurturing teamworking
    skills) and form social ventures (fortifying business skills) for the
    purpose of earning some money to offset the cost of books.

    Option 2: Use the $100,000 you spoke of to start a not-for-profit
    publishing house that sells direct to the public (run by business
    students). By doing so you will cut out the retailer who applies large
    mark-ups to these materials.

    Option 3: Review how your book co-op purchases and marks up books.

    Option 4: Look at improving your second hand book program at school.
    Most book co-ops have buy back programs but they gouge the students
    during the buy back and then charge excessive prices for reselling the
    books.

    Option 5: Create a university fund for helping financially disadvantaged
    students purchase books at a discounted price.

    Option 6: Form purchasing unions in your business school to put pressure
    on suppliers to reduce costs. If a rep from Thompson awards contracts to
    publishers for the entire curriculum...they may be more apt to provide
    your with deeper discounts.



    However, if you feel strongly about open source as the way forward, then
    I would encourage you to consider putting together a committee to review
    open source materials. For every kind soul who releases a good book to
    open source access, there is a wannabe writer who publishes their text
    via open source because they cannot find a publisher to publish it.



    As an aside, if you posted this comment in criticism to the high price
    of text books in developing countries, I think you would find mass
    support for open access. In fact, I'd argue that it would be worthwhile
    to convene a workshop into how academics can band together to put
    pressure on publishers to exclude developing countries from generic
    publishing contracts in order to allow authors to print and sell their
    books in developing countries at cost. Publishers have compromised
    somewhat by printing "International Editions" which are typically soft
    cover versions of a US hard cover text sold at a lower price. However,
    the discounts for these editions are not low enough for students in
    developing countries to afford. This is an area that can benefit from
    open access.



    I realize that the last paragraph contradicts my position on open access
    somewhat but I would argue that a distinction should be drawn between
    supporting open access for developing countries (a hearty yes to that)
    and supporting open access in affluent countries (keeping option 5 above
    in mind).



    Gosh, as I read through this I realize that I may have latent Republican
    leanings....God help me, next thing I know I'll be advocating for
    intensification of off-shore oil drilling ;-).



    All the best,

    Scott



    -------------------------------------------
    Dr. Scott Victor Valentine
    Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
    National University of Singapore
    469C Bukit Timah Road
    Singapore 259772



    scott.valentine@nus.edu.sg
    -------------------------------------------





    ----- Original Message -----

    From: Barnett, Michael <mailto:mbarnett@COBA.USF.EDU>

    To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU

    Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 10:46 PM

    Subject: Open source texts



    -- Fair warning: I'm cross-posting yet again. When will I ever
    reform?



    Textbooks are expensive. In Florida public universities,
    textbook costs rival tuition costs. I'm currently chairing a "Textbook
    Affordability Initiative" at the University of South Florida to help
    resolve this problem (and not simply by raising tuition costs to make
    textbook costs appear cheaper by comparison!). We've tried direct
    negotiation with a major publisher to purchase blanket access to their
    electronic archives (cf. library purchase agreements with journal
    publishers), but the price they've quoted makes it infeasible.



    And so now we've turned to exploring open source textbook
    options and ways to use other course materials in lieu of texts. I'd
    rather not recreate any wheels, should they already exist, and so I ask
    for your advice and experiences with open source projects, should you
    have any. I don't know if the quantity and quality of open source texts
    is adequate. I don't know all the challenges of incentivizing authors
    to release texts and course materials for open source. I don't know all
    the challenges of incentivizing professors to adopt open source texts
    and materials for their courses. And I don't know if I should be
    prepared for serious legal or other challenges from publishers who want
    to maintain the gravy train of privatizing a bit too much of what, in my
    mind at the moment, should largely be public knowledge. And, of course,
    many recipients of this e-mail are also recipients of royalty payments,
    so what are the implications of upending this system for you?



    I have a perhaps overly optimistic idea that I can create a pool
    of funds on the order of, say, $100,000, within my university that could
    be used to provide grants to authors and adopters. Where viable open
    source materials don't already exist, we'd offer new authors, say,
    $5,000 for releasing a text that at least, say, two other professors
    have agreed to adopt. We'd put the text through external review, and to
    receive the full grant, the authors would have to agree to a few
    revisions to ensure the text is of adequate quality. I'm hoping that
    there are enough out-of-print or unpublished texts of relevance out
    there that this becomes feasible without great effort. Professors would
    be offered grants of, say, $500, for completing a tutorial on open
    source use and then adopting open source materials for a course. I'd
    rely on student pressure to encourage professors to adopt open source as
    well.



    Please let me know of your experiences and your thoughts on this
    idea. I'm glad to summarize for the list, should folks desire. I
    currently can be reached at: mbarnett@coba.usf.edu.



    ********************

    Michael L. Barnett, PhD

    University of South Florida

    College of Business Administration

    Department of Management & Organization

    4202 E. Fowler Avenue, BSN 3527

    Tampa, FL 33620-5500

    Phone: 813-974-1727

    Fax: 813-974-1734

    Webpage: http://www.coba.usf.edu/barnett



    View my research on my SSRN Author page:
    <http://ssrn.com/author=414796
    <https://email.usf.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ssrn.com/author=
    414796> >






    ---------------------------------
    The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
    exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland
    (SC 038302).


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  • 3.  The price of Textbooks

    Posted 03-17-2009 08:23
    Where I am now we use old editions until we can no longer get enough. Students buy books online from Europe where the cost is considerably less, use online consolidators... The European versions may have chapters in a slightly different order and may have a few European company examples, but I have found that there are precious few differences. Students also buy (individually even if the class is using newer editions) old editions on ebay or amazon and use those. Generally the differences between the old and new editions are so slight that it is criminal that they are called a new edition.  Then there is the group who buys a book, photocopies it and then returns it. 

    While I order books by price and actively look for paperback, I can't always do that. I am using a strategy book that is $250 and the semester long simulation is $36 (multiplying the number of students posted that use this simulation the man takes in $306,000+ a year from the simulation alone). I am using his textbook as well because it dovetails so well with the simulation. The simulation is worth it. The textbook is way out of line price wise. He puts out a new edition EVERY year. In my class there is NO student who paid USA retail and most are using photocopied versions, old editions or European editions. I put my copy on 2 hour reserve for a week so those who are using older stuff or European versions can compare their book to what I am using. I just got the new edition and it appears to be almost identical. Would I use this textbook if there was a cheaper book that dovetailed as well with the simulation? No. It is well written, content is student friendly but the price is out of line. WAY out of line.

    My understanding is that USA students subsidize the price of USA publishers selling their books in other countries. The current edition of the European version of the book is less than 1/2 of the USA edition and that includes shipping!

    Carolyn

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  • 4.  The price of Textbooks

    Posted 03-17-2009 11:52
    Hi all,

    I just recently learned about the options for renting textbooks.  One of the texts I use is also one that has a new edition just about yearly and is in the $200 price range.  Renting it is half of the purchase price but so far I'm not aware that any of my students are using the renting option.

    The downside of renting as I see it is that I think this is a professional book that the students should be keeping as part of their professional library after the semester ends.  I would rather the student use an older edition than to not have the book for use later.

    The up side of renting, at least if renting from www.chegg.com, is that they plant a tree for each book rented.

    Cheers,
    Susie
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    H. Susie Coddington, Ph.D.
    Director, MBAOD Practicum & Field Placement Experiences
    The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
    Phone: (410) 992-9563 
    Mobile: (443) 812-2441
    Web: carey.jhu.edu
    learning never ends...
    "That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've 
    understood all your life, but in a new way."  Doris Lessing

    On Mar 17, 2009, at 8:23 AM, Carolyn B wrote:

    Where I am now we use old editions until we can no longer get enough. Students buy books online from Europe where the cost is considerably less, use online consolidators..