Government-Funded Textbooks: Let's Not And Say We Did
from the bad-ideas dept
One of the retorts I sometimes hear when I criticize our current system of overly broad copyright protection is that the only alternative is government funding of copyrighted works. This is not, of course, what most of us are advocating, and there's every reason to think that a properly balanced and limited system of copyright protection (along with some clever business models) can create plenty of incentives to produce creative works without asking the taxpayer to pay for them. However, every once in a while you come across someone who really does want the government to fund creative works. Dean Baker, for example. is pushing his plan to have the government pay for college textbooks that would then be placed in the public domain for public consumption.
This is a bad idea for a bunch of reasons. For starters, there's no reason to think that government-funded textbooks would be any good. Financing textbooks by selling them to students ensures that textbook publishers have an incentive to produce books that meet the needs of students, or at least their professors, and to improve textbook quality over time. In contrast, if textbooks are financed by taxpayers, the textbooks that get produced are likely to be determined more by politics and bureaucracy than by the needs of the customers. The result is likely to be a lot of mediocre textbooks focused on topics that federal officials think are needed, rather than what will actually get used. Second, there's a basic issue of equity here. College students tend to come from families that are wealthier, on average, than the general public. Less than half of young people attend four-year colleges. So it seems a little perverse to tax everybody in order to subsidize the textbook purchases of relatively privileged college students. Means-tested financial aid programs are much better at reaching students who really need the help. Finally, it's worth asking whether we want to take the risk of politicizing the content of college curricula. We already have enough politics involved in deciding what goes into textbooks used in public high schools, which are publicly-funded. Do we really want the federal government put in charge of deciding what kind of textbooks the country's college students need?
What's really needed, I think, is to find ways to leverage the web for lower-cost distribution of instructional materials. There's no reason to think that college students 20 years from now will still be getting course information from giant paper books. Whether textbooks are replaced by Wikipedia-style collaborative textbook projects, by companies selling site licenses to websites full of instructional materials, by ad-supported instructional websites, or by some business model nobody's thought of yet, there's every reason to think competition from the web will revolutionize the textbook market in the coming years and give both instructors and students more choices about how information is disseminated. We ought to let that process play itself out, and not get the government involved in deciding what should be in our textbooks.
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Filed Under: copyright, dean baker, government funded, public domain, textbooks
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I'm not entirely sure this is completely thought through. I would believe that the majority of college students are not attending four year universities, but instead are pursuing two year degrees at smaller community colleges with the option to transfer. The price of textbooks at community colleges can be as high as tuition. In many cases, the textbooks are the same books used at high priced universities.
Perhaps if the books were priced lower (though not government subsidized) more people would be financially capable of pursuing higher education.
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Re:
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Gov't Funded Textbooks
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Re: Gov't Funded Textbooks
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Colleges and textbook sales.
As far as pricing books lower, the best chance of that happening is to introduce some form of competition in textbook sales - I personally like the idea of virtual books being offered ala Amazon.com's Kindle or something similar.
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Where have you been?
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
The problem with textbooks today is that a few publishers control the business and pretty much dictate what will happen. It hardly seems reasonable, particularly if they can influence the profs with the hope of a book contract.
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ASU fan
There isn't any reason to assume that government text books would be inferior to private industry created books. Conversely, since most schools buy from the same publisher and salesperson year after year anyway, it pays the publisher to cut cost and do as little editing as possible. From what I’ve seen with text books they all just hash out the same facts anyway. Is there really that much difference in one history or math book compared to another? The incentive for the people writing government text books would be to keep their jobs. Actually if there was a free government text book, private business would have an incentive to make an outstanding text book that schools would want instead of the government sponsored one because it was much, much better (just be sure to take out the kickback to the person making the decision). Text books are kind of stupid anyway because electronic readers would be much cheaper counting printing, shipping, storage, etc, but if we are going to have them let’s get them in the $20 price range instead of the $100 one.
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Re: ASU fan
http://www.chegg.com/
So far, the books I've needed since I found them, are ones I'm going to want to keep, but it's still a great idea.
EtG
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Save the Govt funds for tuition.
Competition needs to come in the form of not only lower prices, but alternatives to paper books. E-books that are readable on devices like the Kindle or similar would be the biggest step in my opinion, but they need to be adopted by the colleges in question as well.
EtG
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Re: Save the Govt funds for tuition.
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EtG
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Re: Save the Govt funds for tuition.
eBooks would be great and less expensive in the long run.
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I love the Kindle idea. If I could get a textbook for $25 to $50 from Amazon on a Kindle, that would easily justify the $400 upfront cost.
I also like the idea about putting the stuff online, but web-based school services thus far have been horribly designed and need a serious rethink. Take a look at Blackboard and you'll see my meaning. It's hideous. It's slow. It borders on unusable.
This talk of average income is kind of irrelevant. Average income in my area is below what is necessary to survive. My family is above average income, but they don't have any savings and they can still barely afford to pay bills. My mom provides me with housing. Everything else, I work for. Food, gas, phone, insurance, school... you name it.
Around here, my situation is way above average. And don't get me wrong, I'm not upset at my family for not being able to afford to save money for me, or anything ridiculous like that, but it does make reading comments like these a bit unpleasant. =)
It's worth noting that 90% of college students accept some kind of financial aid - be it loans, scholarships, grants, or what have you. I would only count the other 10% as "privileged."
Now onto the meaty part: This government funding of text books business is despicable. I'd rather pay $200 for a calculus book than get it for free if I could keep the government out of the equation. I don't think the government has any nefarious interests in brainwashing college students, but I know it wants to dumb down education to the lowest common denominator.
Look at the No Child Left Behind act, the most repulsive thing to happen to education since Kansas tried to ban science. NCLB says, in a nutshell, "Let's hold the whole class back for the sake of the one idiot who doesn't care and won't be made to care no matter how badly the teacher tries."
I'm glad I made it out of high school before that took effect. I'm not interested in receiving a circumcised education just because somebody else is. That's ridiculous and counterproductive to educating a society.
The government should be a lean organization operating on a meager income and dedicated primarily to bettering society, not the huge, scheming, war-mongering, wasteful monstrosity it has become. I don't see why, as the Sprint commercial suggests, the world couldn't be governed by a roomful of fire fighters. We'd probably be a lot better off if politics didn't involve so many politicians.
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Comrades let's embraces this idea.
I'd write more but I have a bread line to go stand in....
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Re: Comrades let's embraces this idea.
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Another 'feel good' initiative that will turn into bad news.
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Textbooks are not a free market
Your statement would be true if textbooks were a free market, but unfortunately they are not. If I'm taking a college course in statistics, I can't go down to Borders and buy whatever statistics text I want; I have to buy the one the professor uses. More and more often, that text is one that the professor himself has written and creates a captive market for. And because the run is so small (no one not taking the course would buy his shitty book), the cost is high. And of course, there has to be a new edition every year to discourage reselling of used text books. Government-funded, nationally-standardized textbooks don't sound like such a bad idea to me.
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Re: Textbooks are not a free market
My son has found the perfect antidote: He waits a few weeks to see which "required" or recommended books are actually used in class, and which of those in fact have useful content. More often than not the books aren't needed to follow along and get decent grades, so he often doesn't buy anything at all. Score one for him!
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Re: Textbooks are not a free market
I'm most hopeful about the MakeTextbooksAffordable campaign, as it offers professors an alternative to the primary option they've had up to this point, i.e., the option offered to them by the major (for profit) textbook publishers. If professors are willing to consider alternative models (and forgo the textbook profits they would otherwise be making on the backs of their students), they have an opportunity to create a system that can work better for everyone. (It reminds me of the situation in the digital music market which was ushered in by the internet and Napster.)
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One advantage
I'm guessing that government funded textbooks, unlike the private sector ones, would not be allowed to establish religion in violation of the First Amendment.
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Bzzt
I don't think the government needs to produce texts, but I certainly think limiting textbook prices is in line.
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Glad to see you pick up on my proposal. Let me make a couple of quick points.
First, we already subsidize college through loans, direct aid, and direct funding (state universities). So, if you object to college aid because it benefits the well-off, you have a lot to yell about already. Furthermore, since the aid is generally based on total costs (including textbooks), the prospect of getting cheap or low-cost textbooks might actually be a money saver. The money involved, by my calculation, would be very small, about 0.01 percent of the federal budget.
Second, I propose having the money funneled through private contractors (read the proposal). That would allow competitive bidding and an evaluation after the fact of what was produced. If no one ever used the textbooks developed by a particular publisher, presumably they would never get another cent of public funding.
Finally, since there is nothing in my scheme to preclude private textbook book publishers from continuing to produce textbooks, we would be allowing the market to decide which textbooks to use. People would still have the option to spend $150-$200 to buy a book by some highly promoted honcho, or they could get a book produced through the publicly funded system that can be downloaded for free. Let the market decide.
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Re: (Dean Baker's comments)
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Cheap Textbooks
For those looking for cheaper textbooks, I thought I'd point you to a recent study that compared online textbook sellers.
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You're kidding, right?
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government produced textbooks
Maybe if the government paid for all college books as well, you'd get some standardization. For example, if the college kids in (name of state you hate form some irrational reason) had to study from the same books as (name of state you like for some equally irrational reason) then maybe the net effect would be positive.
Obviously the grade schools aren't a sterling example of this, because of the wide variance from state to state, but this could be a new start for them as well.
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Brought to you by the same people who brought you the food pyramid:
the classics pyramid
The physics pyramid
the chemistry pyramid
the hotel, motel, and restaurant management pyramid
the MBA pyramid
any concept can be forced into the pyramid model. just watch!
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I've noticed since my kids are in college that they sell new versions of textbooks almost EVERY year. I suppose that's a strategy for shutting down the used textbook business. So, we're stuck buying new textbooks for HUGE sums of money.
There should be more competition, but unfortunately, the existing publishers have driven most of the competition out of the market.
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Textbook Publishing
I don't know what is the solution, I just feel like we're getting hoodwinked by the publishing industry!
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Cheaper than renting textbooks
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try eCampus!!
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cheap textbooks
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