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California Wants To Legislate Use of Digital College Textbooks

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 12/14/11

California's Senate is pondering legislation to mandate the development of digital textbooks in order to save college students money. A new bill proposes that the state invest $25 million to create 50 new textbooks, which would be made available free to students in digital form or would cost $20 each in printed form.

The legislation would create a request for proposal process inviting faculty, publishers, and others to develop digital open source textbooks and related courseware, 25 for fall 2013 and 25 for fall 2014. The materials would be placed under a Creative Commons licensing structure that would grant readers free access and also allow instructors to customize the content. The bill stated that material would be reviewed and approved by subject matter experts.

The legislation would also require publishers selling textbooks adopted by faculty for the most widely taken lower division courses to provide at least three free copies of their books to be placed on reserve in campus libraries.

The announcement came in the midst of midyear budget-related "trigger cuts," tied to shortfalls in state revenues. These cuts will automatically decrease allocations to the state's college and university systems. Though the reductions are still undefined, they're expected by administrators to lead to additional tuition increases in the near future. According to a recent report from the College Board, the state's four-year public universities have put in place the highest tuition increases of any other state this year--21 percent, compared to a national average of 8.3 percent. California community colleges saw a 37 percent tuition increase over the same period.

In proposing the new digital textbook bill, California Senate President Darrell Steinberg said that the average cost for textbooks for California college students is $1,300 per year. He's pushing for the state to promote the creation of "open educational resources," books that would be published specifically for the mostly widely delivered courses.

To demonstrate what he has in mind, Steinberg held up a copy of Understandable Statistics, an introductory text used in courses attended by 220,000 students in the state. At Cosumnes River College, he added, the book is priced at $214. (Published by Brookes/Cole, an imprint of Cengage Learning, the book is $225.96 in hardcover and $151.56 in paperback on Amazon.com.) A survey of required materials shows that the particular textbook is actually in use by only one statistics instructor at Cosumnes; the others use less expensive materials. Steinberg then held up an alternative text, Collaborative Statistics, an interactive open digital textbook written by De Anza College instructors Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean.

One school that has adopted the less expensive text in some of its classes is Lake Tahoe Community College. Instructor Larry Green, who customized the textbook contents for his class, said he recently talked with other faculty using the book. "We were all in agreement; not only was it free, but it was better. We're not willing to sacrifice quality for our students."

Noted Dean Florez, a former California state senator and currently head of 20 Million Minds, a fledgling organization promoting digital textbooks, "[Students] pay way too much. Over $30 million for one book for one course in our entire system makes no sense, when you can go and get the Collaborative Statistics book today. Two hundred thousand-plus students can get it for free and get an enhanced version, and get a hard copy for under $20. That's just one course. Senator Steinberg is calling for 50 courses. You do the math. A $25 million investment to recoup $1 billion a year in savings for our students.... That's a return that no one in this nation can replicate."

One student who supports the idea of free and cheap digital textbooks has created an online petition at change.org encouraging lawmakers and college faculty to support the initiative. Kelsey McQuaid, a student at the University of California, Davis and communications director of California College Democrats, a political network, said she works an additional 20 hours a week to cover the latest round of increases in college charges. McQuaid is seeking 100,000 signatures for her petition. As of Dec. 13, she had 78.

Comments

Fri, Dec 30, 2011 Ryan Oklahoma

Anything for affordable college textbooks in the United States. College is expensive and so are the college textbooks. AffordTextbooks.com Team and USPIRGs are always in support for Open Source Textbooks.

Fri, Dec 23, 2011 Patrick Roanhouse Baltimore

You know how much easier it was for me to pirate a copy of my text book to get it to use with a screen reader than it is to get copy on special anti theft CD room displayer audio version? A F-TON EASIER. If i got the audio version it only came from the center of blind and dyslexics in baltimore and even then they were 2 to three versions behind. Also i had to rip the cover off my book and send it to the publisher for proof, so i couldn't even resell my book... but i learned fast in order to get a digital version of my text book that could be read on my laptop (mac OSX) i had to pirate. They had nothing for Mac users only this 90 days only bullshit called a jumpbook. It stopped working 2 week before the end of class it wasn't even a PDF it was some sort of proprietary application format where you couldn't even highlight the text and a screen reader wouldn't work with it. So i pirated my text books and then made my own audio books using the Mac's text to speech software to make AACs of the text section by section and then stitched it together creating chaptered AAC audio books. I then read along while double 2x speed on the playback of the audio book and because of both reading it and listening it was wam bam double comprehension. And for the dumb and stupid Open Source is not mandated by government its a collective project from around the world or around the country. The nut jobs who complain that this is some sort of big gov plot need to turn off the alex jones, take off the tin foil hat, and go look at the BS large textbook companies and texas based legislation is trying to do to Mess up text books for the rest of the country. Because texas is the biggest state with the most students they get to pretty much dictate what they put in the books. So i'm sorry but I don't want my future kids being told BUSH jr was the great republican hero and Reagan was the 2nd coming of Conservative Christ.

Tue, Dec 20, 2011 chris

While I generally agree the cost of a single book has gone through the roof, using $25million of tax payer funds to subsidize books just doesn't seem right either. Why do we continue to see examples of courses/instructors who've adopted a $160 text but then only use a portion of it? Who's fault is that? It's certainly not the publisher's or student's.

Mon, Dec 19, 2011 Larry Press United States

The article speaks of a mandate to produce 50 "textbooks," but I will be surprised if electronic teaching material is formatted as course-long textbooks in the future. One approach is a collection of modules focused around a given course. For an example, see the Principles of Biology "etext" from Nature Publishing: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/11/post-gutenberg-e-text-for-biology-101.html.

Mon, Dec 19, 2011 Larry Press United States

The article says the state will pay $25 million to create 50 textbooks. That is $500,000 each. I have a collection of a little over 100 modules, which is intended to serve as material for several versions of an IT literacy course for undergraduate or high school students. It is about half done will gladly finish it for only $400,000 :-).

Fri, Dec 16, 2011

OK, who is going to pay for the development of these digital textbooks? Publishers are not nonprofit organizations and contrary to popular opinion, developing digital products is an EXTREMELY expensive endeavor. Who pays not only the authors, but the editors, designers, programmers, customer support, etc. that is required to create these $20 textbooks? Just because it is delivered digitally doesn't mean that it did not cost anything to develop. So unless the government WANTS to pay to DEVELOP the materials, publishers will just opt out because they will lose money trying to meet those requirements.

Thu, Dec 15, 2011 A,melia FL

How long do we have to wait? Kno is also giving away free textbooks. :) What we want is affordable textbook, and that's what 'Textbook Rebellion' is all about. Why not just solve that problem. Check out http://textbooks.org/ for textbook updates and other great deals.

Wed, Dec 14, 2011

*YAWN* The state is late to the game. We needed this two years ago when the iPad came out. You should see the freshman in the high schools with paper books. We are "college prep" at our high school. That means that some of these college textbooks that go digital will find their way to our school, I hope. Goodness knows, our colleges teach so many remedial classes these days that I suspect a really popular college textbook probably is a high school book....or vice versa. We can all benefit from digital books. Regarding: "How do I write notes in my book?" Use the money you save to buy an iPad or kindle or other e-reader. Regarding political correctness: I understand your concerns. As a concerned parent I have reviewed textbooks for our public schools. YOU DO REALIZE that the state already controls what books are in the public classrooms, right? In other words, this legislation is of no additional concern. The state is already controlling the media in the classroom. In fact, is it not their duty to do so? It is also your duty and right to review the materials as well. *YAWN*

Wed, Dec 14, 2011 Student Advocate

Let's try to be reasonable and use our ability to reason. This article says that potential competitors for developing these textbooks would be "faculty, publishers, and others," but other news accounts of the bill include "content providers," which would include publishers like Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Cengage, Gale, and many others. They would compete. To infer that the State of California would mandate the use of these textbooks or the dictate who the authors of the text might be is to misinterpret the legislation. A search of the language of the bill would be a responsible first step to understanding this bill. This innovation would not replace the current options for textbook adoption, but would provide other options that could save students money. The commenters who complain that this is a state-mandated intervention ignore the facts that (a) the proposal would open additional options rather than "procribing" (sic) texts, and that (b) the textbook market is not an open market; the students who have to buy the books have no choice about what product to buy. To the commenter who complained about digital books--if you don't like the interface for highlighting and notating ebooks and don't appreciate the opportunity to exchange comments online with others in your class, just buy the print version for $20 instead of $120. Write with a pencil or pen all you want. Why deny others a different way of highlighting and annotating? You could donate $100 to the profit-bloated textbook publishing companies each time you buy a book as you read the free book online if that made you feel better. I think they would accept your contribution.

Wed, Dec 14, 2011

Who will compensate the author for the time and effort of writing a high quality text? If California Senate President Darrell Steinberg and the other state senators would like to save money, they can just work for free as well.

Wed, Dec 14, 2011

There you go, taking things much further than what is actually the case. The state is not supplying the textbooks - "The legislation would create a request for proposal process inviting faculty, publishers, and OTHERS to develop digital open source textbooks and related courseware". Even more so, they are not dictating any changes to the content from what current textbooks already have, but evidently you disagree with the current content - which is a separate issue. If you have a problem with trying to cut down the costs for students, then you must not be or have been a college student nor have any kids that are college students.

Wed, Dec 14, 2011 Michael Santa Clara

As a college student myself the concept of ebook's is entertaining and someday may have uses. In reality the only people who considered ebook's as a alternate are not the students but those who can make money on it. Let me ask you how do write notes next to a paragraph that is important, how do you underline and quickly jump to a section when the battery is dead. Oh what about the part that professor say print out the material and bring it to class ( oh my god we just killed a tree). Have you ever checked out a ebook from your college library, I tried today and failed. I got same book in about 4 minutes and it works all the time regardless of power. The point is, yes there are some valid uses for ebooks like user manuals, but even those have flaws. Lets move on and worry about something more important.

Wed, Dec 14, 2011

Does anyone else see a problem with this? It's bad enough that government -- federal AND state -- has proscribed what can be taught in the classroom. Now the STATE wants to supply the textbooks. This will turn into Political Correctness on steroids heaped on top of every extreme environmental, climate change, and Affirmative Action agenda out there. Truth will be the first casualty of state-authored textbooks. The second are the students coming out of college with skulls full of mush.

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