Re:Give Students User Freedom
by throwanem on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @12:10PM
(#26015921)
I'm less concerned with tools like Zoom and Teams than I am with the shocking degree of lock-in that textbook publishers are doing lately. [1]
It's not enough just to charge nosebleed prices for the text itself, although they still do that. Now, in a lot of cases, you have to buy an "access code", likewise priced to induce epistaxis, in order to submit homework and assignments for grading. By the sound of it, you increasingly can't even participate in the education you're already paying for, without paying a lot extra for what looks to be more or less pure rent-seeking - and rent-seeking that depresses the used textbook market, besides.
It's not enough just to charge nosebleed prices for the text itself, although they still do that. Now, in a lot of cases, you have to buy an "access code", likewise priced to induce epistaxis, in order to submit homework and assignments for grading. By the sound of it, you increasingly can't even participate in the education you're already paying for, without paying a lot extra for what looks to be more or less pure rent-seeking - and rent-seeking that depresses the used textbook market, besides.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/why-st...