The connexions site mentioned in the article is at <a href="http://cnx.org/" rel="nofollow">http://cnx.org/</a> - I found it recently while looking up some maths, looks like some good stuff in there.
This is an area that needs to be hit big. & Not just prescribed textbooks, educational materials as a whole. The potential is enormous.<p>There is potential for $0 degrees. Maybe even free degrees. It's possible to acquire all the knowledge contained within a University degree on the 'outside'. That's not new but it's getting easier. But a framework for delivering the piece of paper, that would be something.
I actually don't understand how publishing houses still have control over this industry. With recreational/consumer books, authors need the publishers marketing machines. With textbooks,<p>- Many can just prescribe to their own students. 'Introduction to Economics' could sell 1k units a year in just one University.<p>- Authors are presumably already known/respected/wrote the previous version.<p>- Many academics prescribing the damn things freely admit that one doesn't differ too much from the other.
Richard Baraniuk of Connexions (mentioned in the article) talked at TED a while ago:<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_...</a>
My Intermediate Micro professor suggested McAfee's book as a great resource that would tell us all we needed to know about economics, and do so quite rigorously...<p>... the week after he told us we'd have to buy $200 worth of dead-tree textbooks for the class.
The biggest problem with this field is that most undergraduate-level teachers really don't have the passion required to research free replacements for the textbooks recommended to them by the publishers associated with the university.<p>I think students in each faculty should rally together and really push this point and work with the professors to find alternatives to 200$ textbooks..<p>The financial strain that textbook publishers place on students for profit inhibits the learning that their textbooks are supposed to stimulate... That's the big irony.
Anyone else find it odd that they didn't at least mention the effect of piracy on the market, especially after having a big piece on it a few weeks back?
i wish the big universities would kill these publishers<p>come on, harvard and stanford have like ten quadrillion dollar endowments and they get muscled by a thirty person publishing house in ohio??<p>i know the profs want to get paid. just pay them a flat fee of like $100k from their school's endowment and then release the book under CC license. the prof makes out because they get their money up front. the students win because they get cheaper books, quicker. the publishers die like vermin.<p>also some of these profs need a reality check. just like the musicians and actors...they are not a breed apart...if they want to gouge, they will need to deal with piracy.