States are moving to cut college costs by introducing open-source textbooks

Re:States are moving to cut college costs by introducing ope... by sharkweek on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @11:56AM (#14194698)

My Economics professor famously used to release a new version of his textbook every year at my school. I suppose recognizing the forces at hand, he was making the most rational decision in doing so.

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Re:States are moving to cut college costs by introducing ope... by nradov on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @12:03PM (#14194782)

My Biology professor wrote the textbook he used in his class. And on the first day of class he gave each student who had purchased a new copy a cash refund on his author's royalty.

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Re:States are moving to cut college costs by introducing ope... by sidrajaram on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @02:20PM (#14196504)

That must've amounted to several tens of cents (per book) on the $200 price tag.

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Re:States are moving to cut college costs by introducing ope... by fotbr on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @04:27PM (#14197651)

Mine did that as well. He also offered unlimited extra credit at the rate of 5pts per error found.

A small group of us got together that first evening and found enough typos, spelling and punctuation errors that we all passed the class with a high "A" without needing to do anything else.

He wasn't happy about it, and I think he later dropped the "unlimited" part. He was less upset when most of us went to class anyway -- The way I saw it, I paid for the class, even if I didn't have to worry about doing the work for a grade, I still wanted to learn something.

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Re:States are moving to cut college costs by introducing ope... by TallGuyShort on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @03:10PM (#14196999)

And did he give you a speech about how he was doing you a favor because eliminating the resale market lowered the original price? Mine did.

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