Textbooks must die

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/textbook-rant.html

by niyazpk • 17 years ago

47 77 17 years ago

sethgodin.typepad.com

alexjmann• 17 years ago

I had a similar conversation with the Dean of my business school the past semester, basically telling him that physical textbooks lagged the available technology. He didn't want to hear it because "the number one seller of textbooks on campus WAS the university."

azanar3• 17 years ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

It seems your Dean would've been good friends with Upton Sinclair.

Although, it does raise what I think is an interesting question. It has been said on here a lot that markets tend to see monopolies as market damage, and route around them; this isn't quite that severe, but seems to be a vertical monopoly to a certain degree. How would one route around this? The obvious option would be "go to school somewhere else," but this seems endemic in academia as a whole.

johnnybgoode2• 17 years ago

this seems endemic in academia as a whole

Yes, because this is not even close to a free market. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658165

lowe• 17 years ago

combine these points with public high school budget cuts and it just gets worse. i still remember how demotivating it was being handed a heavy chemistry textbook from three decades ago on the first day of my junior year. the first 5 minutes alone flipping through those pages was probably what killed all interest in science for 19/20 in that class...i mean the authors were out of touch with teenagers even back in the 70s. so my biggest problem with textbooks has been their age: that has been the most significant in making a subject seem static and dead.

i've had CS and foreign language profs who used their own course notes updated yearly, and i ended up relying on these more than any prescribed textbook. the freshness made a big difference. the profs were also more invested in the material because they either wrote it themselves, or at least took the time to assemble. as such they were clued in to the contents and focused on them in lecture. a batch of notes also has less perceived authority than a textbook, which i think is a good thing, as it encourages questions and challenges.

zck• 17 years ago

It always is nice when a professor takes the time to put together a course packet, but sometimes it can be frustrating when you don't understand something in class, and go to the course packet to find it explained the same way.

sketerpot2• 17 years ago

Internet to the rescue! Steal somebody else's course packet and direct your students to it. Maybe have a couple of course packets. Variety helps, and students these days are (or should be) good at ignoring vast amounts of irrelevant material.

russell• 17 years ago

Seth is right on. Textbooks should be gone within ten years, especially the college introductory and public school pablum. I expect there will be some resistance. Textbooks probably count for a lot in the publish or perish race and they bring a nice side income. But decades ago other professors were putting together xeroxed collections of articles. Students are demanding some relief. I cant see anything but the trend snowballing.

I cant help but wonder if the demise of textbooks will lead to other significant revolutions. I remember sweating through problem after problem in calculus so I could do problem after problem on the tests. Wouldnt it be better to give the students Mathematica or similar software? It could do the work, while giving them a tool to get a deeper understanding of the underlying problem.

socratees• 17 years ago

If textbooks become a thing of the past, every student will carry a netbook / tablet (which runs educational software, browsers etc) to school.

caffeine• 17 years ago

Wouldn't it be better to give the students Mathematica or similar software? It could do the work [...]

This is really a tough one. My opinion is no - the sweat is the learning. Skipping the problems would just lead to knowing a lot about math, without actually knowing any math.

On the other hand, it's tempting - and in the Real World (tm), people do just plug their giant, buck-nasty equations into Mathematica and avoid doing all the book-keeping.

I guess the question is: should pilots all just train on auto-pilot, while having only a conceptual understanding of what piloting is about? Or should they learn to pilot manually first, and then use the auto-pilot judiciously? There are legitimate points going both ways - but I vote for the 2nd.

azanar3• 17 years ago

But decades ago other professors were putting together xeroxed collections of articles.

Cohesion is a problem with xeroxed articles. Not to say it isn't with most textbooks, but it can be one of their primary goals, whereas the primary goal of an article is to disseminate a set of ideas in as efficient a way as possible, with some assumptions about prior knowledge of the reader.

I remember sweating through problem after problem in calculus so I could do problem after problem on the tests.

So did I. Part of internalizing the fundamentals of a subject is working through exercises that depend on those fundamentals. You don't get that when something else is doing the work for you. Learning isn't easy, and we need to get over the desire to want to make it so.

waratuman• 17 years ago

I love my textbooks, it will be sad to see them go if they do. I've always preferred paper to pdf.

omouse• 17 years ago

The reason you prefer paper over PDF is because PDF merely imitates paper.

sketerpot2• 17 years ago

I prefer hypertext over both of them, especially now that we all have tabbed browsers. There's a reason why people will voluntarily spend hours learning things from Wikipedia.

http://xkcd.com/214/

Locke1689• 17 years ago

I prefer PDF to paper. The Intel IA32 Architecture Volumes would be god-awful in paper form.

sqs• 17 years ago

Why don't more young professors release free textbooks online as a way of raising their profile in the field? Seems to me that should be a great way to advance on the tenure track, but is it actually? Certainly it's not the same as publishing original research, but it ought to at least help out in showing an interest in pedagogy.

neilc• 17 years ago

Publishing a full textbook would probably take too much time away from focusing on research, which is the real currency you need to make your tenure case on. Online publication of a cleaned-up course notes and the like would probably make sense, though.

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

It takes a hell of a lot of effort to release a textbook - time to (conceptually) design it, write it, edit it, have other professors edit it, etc. In the time it takes to do that, they could have banged out a few interesting papers to present at a conference.

As for advancing in tenure-track, I doubt it. As illogical as it is, tenure-track positioning is generally related to research skill, as opposed to pedagogical interest and/or ability. Most large universities would prefer to have great researchers (who publish works with the schools' name on them) who teach as needed and without passion, as opposed to the other way around.

stavrianos• 17 years ago

I've come across a handful of textbooks good enough to keep. It's rare, though. First year university, made the mistake of buying all my texts- first years, don't do this! Now, I ask around one year up, see if the books are worth anything at all. If they are it's easy enough to borrow one from someone else how bought it. At the end of the year, if it was actually exceptional, I'll return the borrowed and buy my own copy.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

"A textbook author in Toronto made enough money from his calculus textbook to afford a $20 million house."

I know that calculus textbook.

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Early-Transcendentals-James-S...

It's workmanlike, but certainly not inspiring like Spivak's textbook.

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/

Rod3• 17 years ago

Seth Godin is a 2nd class thinker. His shallowness and vagueness impress only the gullible. When will people stop listening to him as if he were a god??

Confusion2• 17 years ago

Rod is a 2nd class thinker. His shallow and vague comments impress only the gullible. Why would anyone listen to him?

To refrain from committing the same sin, let me explain that Rod's comment does not show why this blogposting by Godin is 'shallow' or 'vague' and uses the fallacy of 'poisoning the well', by connotating 'listenening to him' with 'acting as if he is a God', leaving no room for someone to say: well, this article is pretty decent, but on the whole I think Godin adds little worth reading.

Rod3• 17 years ago

Examples of 1st class thinkers: Knuth, Sussman, Papadimitriou, Tardos, Vazirani, etc. I admire Jobs for his sense of style. I admire Gates for his business acumen.

I used to like reading Seth Godin. He makes some valid points. However, anyone with a functioning brain is capable of arriving at the same conclusions he does. He does not go into depth because there's no depth to go into. His posts are sweet and fluffy but have zero nutritious value. It's a bunch of truisms that add little to anyone's knowledge.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

I'm not a fan of Seth Godin either, and my first instinct was to comment that 'Godin linkbait must die'. But I do agree with his points, although as usual the analysis is shallow.

Something that deserves more attention is the fact that the textbook industry in the US runs like a cartel (as alluded to above, with professors requiring a particular book for which they get free copies, and the proceeds from which help to pay their salaries).

In Europe I preferred buying college textbooks to learn programming, because they were cheaper and better value than the commercial offerings, without the fancy graphic design covers and marketing outreach.

Rod3• 17 years ago

I am a grad student. I hate the textbook cartel as much as any other grad student who needs to spend 5%-10% of his salary in expensive textbooks. However, this whole "textbooks must die" is linkbaitish and stupid. They don't have to die. Don't shoot at the books, shoot at the cartels. In any case, I read this post and learned zero. Godin is preaching to whom exactly?

Saying that textbooks must die reminds me of the Nazis burning the books they considered un-German. Textbooks can be wonderful when they're really good, and no Kindle or anything will kill the joy of reading a book in paper. Of course, if one looks at marketing books, it's clear they're mostly junk and I would not mind if they were replaced by e-books at all. However, the same does not apply to math / physics books, which tend to require a lot of effort and time to be written, plus the illustrations, etc. This hard work needs to be paid for, and I am willing to pay for it just as long as it's more like $30 rather than the obscene $150.

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

There is a textbook maffia that will put some resistance. Specially those who make a fortune every year with the same scam of changing a word or two in a book and selling it (forcing it on students) as a new updated edition.

Resistance is futile.

credo3• 17 years ago

>>"A textbook author in Toronto made enough money from his calculus textbook to afford a $20 million house."

Let us see, many movie stars, many wall street bankers, many atheletes, many businessmen etc. make far bigger amounts of money.

...and Seth Godin has a problem with the author of one testbook making money

martey• 17 years ago

Except that it is difficult to take a class without buying the textbook, and they are expensive. When was the the last time your professor mandated that you see a certain sports team play, but base tickets cost $100?

azanar3• 17 years ago

The base tickets are far more than $100. You also need to factor in the cost of tuition, transportation to and from, and the opportunity cost of having classes take up your time.

Or, to put in another way, you are not mandated to attend a class where the professor will charge you to see a certain sports team play. Somewhere along the way, you made a choice that brought you to this mandate.

nopassrecover• 17 years ago

For a site promoting entreprenuers and innovation the attitude towards this textbook writer seems odd. At least he's contributing something to society to earn his wealth..

credo3• 17 years ago

If my professor had mandated that I see a certain sports team play, I probably wouldn't have taken the class.

As a free-market type would say or as Stephen Covey would say, take responsibility for your decisions. If you don't like the mandates that come with a certain class, don't take that class.

petercooper3• 17 years ago

It's difficult to take a programming class without owning a computer and they are expensive too.

High fixed costs relating to an academic activity do not provide indicators to the ethics of the people who produce the required items.

alex_c• 17 years ago

Just because there are greater "evils" out there doesn't excuse lesser ones.

It's calculus, which, as invariably gets pointed out in discussions about overpriced textbooks, hasn't changed much in the last century. How much value does that textbook actually bring over other calculus textbooks? Enough to justify a $20 million house? Does it present new and exciting ways to look at calculus? Does it make it that much easier for students to absorb and understand the material? Or is it successful mainly because of political skill inside a cartel-like industry?

Tichy• 17 years ago

Lot's of shitty books of all kinds sell because of good marketing. It wouldn't be a phenomenon exclusive to textbooks.

That said, there are huge differences among calculus textbooks. I don't know the one mentioned here, but when I studied, there was a choice between a very concise and condensed one, and a very drawn out and long one. The latter would have bored me to death. It is not easy to present maths in a short and concise way.

adi92• 17 years ago

this is the author in question - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stewart_(mathematician) .. his book was actually pretty good and I could use it for about 3 classes in my calc sequence.. pretty good value for money

erik• 17 years ago

I remember Stewart's Calculus as a reasonably good textbook. Though they seemed to publish a new edition every two years. Chapter and problem set numbers would get shuffled around, and so you needed the newest edition in order to do assigned homework.

How much has undergraduate level calculus really changed in the last 200 years? The constant updates disrupted the used textbook market and drove sales of new books.

pradocchia• 17 years ago

Slideshow of the house here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123872378357585295.html#arti...

Quite nice, I think. And tasteful.

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

If it's gonna be someone, he's not a bad candidate for it - his Calculus books are high-quality textbook that age nicely.

lionheart• 17 years ago

Yes, but nobody forces you to watch a sport or go to a certain business.

Textbooks are required for college classes.

credo3• 17 years ago

and nobody forces you to attend any particular class either. You're always free to drop out.

sofal2• 17 years ago

I see this come up again and again on HN and this kind of logic keeps getting voted up:

"You're complaining about [lesser evil] when there is [bigger unrelated evil]. Therefore what you say is irrelevant."

Sometimes it takes on this flavor:

"You're worried about the well-being of [one person] when millions are starving every day. Therefore what you say is irrelevant."

Is there some sort of fallacy name for this? This kind of argument says nothing.

petercooper3• 17 years ago

Red Herring: also called a "fallacy of relevance." This occurs when the speaker is trying to distract the audience by arguing some new topic, or just generally going off topic with an argument.

Confusion2• 17 years ago

The problem is the lack of an open market. Amazon has provided more transparancy through reviews, but there still is no freedom of choice for the consumers when a textbook is assigned. There is virtually no competition on price possible.

Moreover, you can't just choose another textbook, as the topics that are covered may differ slightly. Even in math, when you use another Calculus book, there is a reasonable chance you miss out on some stuff, that just happens to be on the exam.

I'm not sure Seth's solution will work and I would rather propose that teachers should be clearer on what kind of problems the student should be able to answer/solve, while keeping in mind that the student should be able to use any in a range of at least six books to study the material.

JimmyL3• 17 years ago

The presence of "freedom of choice" for the consumer depends on how you look at the industry. From a student's perspective, there is no real choice - you use the textbook you're assigned. Some professors will offer a few alternatives, but unless they're very diligent about always giving references to each book (and I had a few professors who did this well), the students who use the number-one book - the one the professor uses when he's lecturing and doing examples - will generally have a better idea of the material and the standard they'll be evaluated on.

From the professor's point of view (considering them as the consumer), however, there's quite a free market. They can get free evaluation copies of any textbook they want, and most schools give individual professors the choice of what book they use for a given class. So the problem then becomes getting professors to switch textbooks, which is tough. Most professors - especially in things like science - will teach the same courses year-on, and will become very comfortable with the material in a given book. They'll know what to skip, what to supplement, and what to offer additional comments on.

ig1• 17 years ago

This post just seems tacky, complaining that because marketing textbooks don't mention his own concept of "permission marketing" that they're out of date.

Also complaining that Stewart making 20 million for text book is unreasonable, when he himself has made a substantial amount of money from writing educational books. Not to mention the 30 million he got for his games site Yoyodyne. Obviously that was completely reasonable.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

True, but not referencing Google? I think a marketing 101 text probably needs to say something about the importance of having your website be discoverable in an internet search, or at the very least review how the commoditization of online advertising has led to a shift in the landscape.

ori_b2• 17 years ago

Or maybe the textbook could focus on the important theory that needs to be covered, and leave keeping up to date with the newest fads up to the students and the professor teaching the course?

The theory is what gives the textbooks value. It's the timeless and constantly useful material that makes a textbook worth referring to decades later.

froo6• 17 years ago

Seth is usually a bit hit and miss, some things he says are interesting, other's are just not.

This post is the latter - yes it's a rant, but it's completely way off base. If he doesn't like the current textbooks, like any good entrepreneur, he should write his own.

This particular line I found hypocritical.

Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online.

In my window, that particular line is being rendered just above where the adverts for his books are on the left.

Yes, people should give away their work for free... I mean, you're doing it, aren't you Seth?

Hypocrite.

hexis2• 17 years ago

How much did you pay to read the blog post?

froo6• 17 years ago

How much did you pay to read the blog post?

Ok, well seeing as you're trying to be a smartass, let me answer you.

Using rough calculations... I use my internet for about 6 hours a day x 30 days a month so I get approximately 180 hours of internet usage a month or 10800 minutes.

Since that blog post took me about 2 minutes to read and I pay $170 a month for my internet access (which includes telephone line rental), then I guess it cost me about 2 cents to read that blog post.

So his 2 cents, cost me 2 cents.

Now we've gotten semantics out of the way, let me answer you properly.

Seth uses his blog as a marketing tool to both sell his books and to promote his "Seth Godin" brand which helps him get his consulting and workshop gigs too.

So yes, he might give away snippets of information on his blog, but make no mistake, he doesn't do it free - he has other outcomes in mind.

Maro• 17 years ago

Here in eastern Europe, university is somewhat different then in the anglo-saxon world. We don't have homework problems (homeworks are never part of the final grade), and exams at the end of the semester are usually oral where the student has to prove theorems/algorithms or in general present some kind of theoretical framework. There is usually a problem-solving exam mid-year, but it only makes up 0-25% of the grade. It's usually managable to pass the problem-solving exam, the real Suck is the oral examination at the end when you're face-to-face with the professor.

As a result of this skew toward the theoretical side, our textbooks are light on problems and practicalities and full of theories, proofs, derivations, etc. (Even a Calculus 101 textbook.) They look more like upper-level textbooks in the anglo-saxon world. As a result, these "textbooks" are usually kept around for later reference.

This is currently changing with the introduction of the so-called 'Bologna process', which basically transforms our systems to more closely match the anglo-saxon world for compatibility reasons. Eg. before we only had 5 year MSc degrees, now we introduced the 3+2 Bsc/Msc system, which is a Good Thing.

Just because a (text)book is kept around for later reference doesn't mean it should be printed, as an electronic version is actually more searchable. The main obstacle is the 'reading off an LCD screen sucks sitting at the desk' issue, which once solved with a good DRM-free paper-like device will do to the Book Industry what MP3 has done to the Music Industry.

Already you can torrent almost any book, even ones that only interest a handful of people in the world, such as research-level physics books (example from my field: search for 'darksiderg cosmology'). The fact that these highly specialized books are torrented a few months after their publication date is pretty puzzling to me =) But I don't complain, as I can preview before I buy (we don't have bookstores selling english-language books, so checking them out at the bookstore is not an option). But once people can copy these to a book-like device, publishers will have to look for another revenue stream. Fortunately, with research-level books, the answer in theory at least is pretty simple: just cut out the publisher, researchers already generate print-ready Latex files anyways. In reality it will be a long struggle; a good use-case is research journals where the publisher is completely unnecessary but is still holding on, researchers are still signing over publication rights of their papers to companies like Springer.

Raphael2• 17 years ago

Eliminate copyright laws and books should soon become available at about cost.

Raphael2• 17 years ago

Is this inaccurate?

htsh2• 17 years ago

Why would this be inaccurate? If there were no copyright laws, anyone could print a popular textbook and hence the market would drive the price down to just above the cost of printing it. What's unlikely is that we'll eliminate copyright laws.

nova2• 17 years ago

The old 14 year limit was a good balance, specially if updated to only cover commercial distribution.

gamble• 17 years ago

>> "Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online."

Some of the worst classes I had as an undergrad were the ones taught with a professor's class notes instead of a proper text. It's true that texts are overly expensive, but the amount of work that goes into a good text isn't trivial.

I'd recommend to anyone that if they don't like the text their class is using, find another one and just photocopy the problem sets from the library's copy if you need them. There's an excellent text available for almost every subject, if you look for it.

Avshalom• 17 years ago

>> "Some of the worst classes I had as an undergrad were the ones taught with a professor's class notes instead of a proper text. It's true that texts are overly expensive, but the amount of work that goes into a good text isn't trivial."

For two reasons at least. One: the amount of effort that goes into a good text and Two it means that every one taking the class from a different teacher is either getting taught something different or being taught from some one else's notes. Same with anytime a new teacher takes over the subject.

A couple years of this and suddlenly people are being taught with error ridden cryptic notes from a teacher who retired years ago but the course material is now so different than the text book that upper level classes relying on what you learned from the teachers notes would need to be restructured so you can change the low level course.

which is exactly what happened at my school, NMT, with the sophomore level physics courses and it's been a 4 year head ache so far.

All of which to say is that the text book industry sucks, not necessarily the text books themselves.

htsh2• 17 years ago

I just wanted to say that this price-gouging is most egregious in the legal world, where the textbooks are full of case-law that is legally required to be freely available. The prof's add their notes at the end of each case and then sell the book for $200. They could simply give you a link to cases & a little pamphlet with their notes.

What bothers me most about this whole setup is it makes a legal education even more expensive than it already is for lower to mid-income students.

hs• 17 years ago

my junior+senior high school lent me old books so students didn't have to buy new inferior books

we had to summarize the books because at the end of the year, they are returned. the next year, we continued with our notes and loaned old books for the level

and no, it's not a poverty-stricken school. in fact it's the best in the nation (out of tens of thousands), producing dozens of ministers, governor, entrepreneurs, artists, etc

bad textbooks must die, good classics must live

johnnybgoode2• 17 years ago

The real problem here is that the textbook industry is being propped up by the government, and I'm not just talking about copyright laws.

People are placed at a serious disadvantage if they don't go to a government-approved university and get a degree. To do this, they have to take certain classes. To take those classes, they have to buy certain textbooks.

If people could learn however they wanted without being at a legal disadvantage, even if that just means attending a truly private university, the textbook extortion scheme would be competed away. Why would you tolerate $200 textbooks if you didn't have to get your hands on that legal credential, which can only be offered by certain institutions?

FrankBlack• 17 years ago

According to the notes from a hearing held in February 2008, the average cost for textbooks in the State University of New York system (SUNY) is $900 per year. If we are conservative and say that $300 of those $900 dollars are for things that cannot be easily replaced (lab books, workbooks, CDs, unique books, etc.) that still amounts to $2400 over the course of four years that could be saved if the text books were made Open Source. For that price the student could buy a laptop capable of everything they'd need over four years at school (a Macbook with bumped up memory and Apple Care protection plan is around $1200 after the student discount, Dell would likely be less for a comparable configuration) and a Kindle and still have money left over for beer. Link to SUNY Investigation: http://www.suny.edu/files/sunynewsfiles/txt/TextbooksTestimo...

Textbooks must die

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