As College Students, have you wondered why you are paying anywhere from $100-$150 for a brand new calculus or economics textbook, when the theories taught in those textbooks have mostly stayed the same in the past 100 years, let alone the past 10. Then why do publishers continually push a new version of textbooks every year or two? This represents a huge costs to students, who generally don't have a lot of dispensable income to begin with.
Hopefully the OpenSource Revolution can help us solve this problem. Slowly yet steadily, professors have begun to post their own versions of textbooks on-line. Using a collaborative model, some professors have started to work together to write their own versions of textbooks, updating them yearly and using them in classes, saving students money.
These textbooks work , as textbooks are generally meant to serve as supplemental reading to lectures. While they may not have bright colors or too many valueless pictures, the theories, terms, and definitions are all there. One Great OpenSource Textbook is by R. Preston Mcafee (http://www.introecon.com/). He's written a well thought out introduction to economics textbook that he uses for his class at Caltech. Anyone can access his textbook free on-line, or can pay a measely $11.10 for a printed copy of his book (to recoup the printing and shipping cost)
Although most economics departments don't know about his book, there is a small following of professors from prestigious universities, including NYU and Harvard, that use his textbook in their classes. Reviewers agree that the book rivals some of the best economics textbooks in terms of academic merit, it puzzles me as to why it isn't more widely used.
I believe that marketing may be the key factor hindering his growth (Good job McGraw Hill, you know how to sell). University departments need to know that these options exist, and that good textbooks are available for free. While some professors may elect not to choose them in lieu of their own books (aka to make $$$), I believe that a good handful of teachers would not be opposed to adopting these textbooks for introductory level classes. Financially constrained students will appreciate a cheaper education that provides the same value.
Viva La Revolucion! - Promote OpenSource Education!
3 comments:
I will take your word for it about calculus, but Economic theories have not changed in 100 years? There are proponents of quite a few schools of economic thought that would have to differ.
Economics is a pretty dynamic discipline.
While economics is a fairly dynamic field, introductory courses mostly cover basic principles that haven't changed in a while. For example, it can generally be agreed that intro courses include:
Supply
Demand
Equilibrium
Market Structures
Maximizing Profit
Minimizing Cost
In addition, if there are important changes, they can be reflected immediately via changes (like in Wikipedia). The beauty of OpenSource is that if important new theorems are developed, a professor will update his textbook.
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