Brown Signs California Bill For Free Textbooks 201
bcrowell writes "California Governor Jerry Brown has signed SB 1052 and 1053, authored by state senator Darrell Steinberg, to create free textbooks for 50 core lower-division college courses. SB 1052 creates a California Open Education Resources Council, made up of faculty from the UC, Cal State, and community college systems. The council is supposed to pick 50 core courses. They are then to establish a 'competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties would apply for funds to produce, in 2013, 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and related materials, meeting specified requirements.' The bill doesn't become operative unless the legislature funds it — a questionable process in California's current political situation. The books could be either newly produced (which seems unlikely, given the 1-year time frame stated) or existing ones that the state would buy or have free access to. Unlike former Gov. Schwarzenegger's failed K-12 free textbook program, this one specifically defines what it means by 'open source,' rather than using the term as a feel-good phrase; books have to be under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA?) license, in XML format. They're supposed to be modularized and conform to state and W3C accessibility guidelines. Faculty would not be required to use the free books."
Countdown to lawsuit (Score:5, Interesting)
How long until the textbook industry sues California for unfair competition?
They could start with Wikibooks (Score:4, Interesting)
They could use the books already on Wikibooks ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page [wikibooks.org] ) as a starting point.
I wonder if the open-source books they will produce will break away from the paper textbook paradigm (linear text+static images)? The one I am writing ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Transport_and_Engineering_Methods [wikibooks.org] ) is heavily hyperlinked, I've included a spreadsheet and expect to include other media, am working on a resource library ( http://www.mediafire.com/?y1ko8gj5rouob [mediafire.com] ), and the concept of "class projects" (design studies) which become part of the book.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
At least it should be cheaper and available sooner than the no-longer-bullet train we're supposedly getting in the next 30 years. Aw, who am I kidding?
Anyway, I'm currently attending a California city college, and I've attended state university before. In my experience, many professors (especially at the city college level, where average incomes are lower) are concerned about textbook prices. They put them in the library reserve for students to use, they allow you to use previous editions, and they'll even look for cheaper alternatives. My current professors also claim they do not receive commission for textbook sales, and that the school essentially breaks even on textbook sales once you consider the costs of running the bookstore.
In the past, many of my computer science courses had complimentary eBooks available online. This year, two of my classes have eBook versions available via CourseSmart which, while cheaper than physical textbooks, can't be used on dedicated eReaders (currently computer, iOS, and Android, with Android devices being limited somehow). They also have the issue of essentially being rentals instead of outright purchases--but still, it's better than nothing.
Finally, two professors I had a while back decided that the existing course books were too expensive, so they wrote their own books and sold them for $10 and $30. Yeah, they obviously get a commission there, but that's better than paying $150.
I imagine there are other schools that are much worse than my personal experiences, but it isn't all bad.
Re:Why not elementary school textbooks? (Score:1, Interesting)
Former Gov. Schwarzenegger tried to do exactly this, with his Free Digital Textbook Initiative. As far as I can tell, it had zero impact.
California needs to get itself under control (Score:3, Interesting)
This is ridiculous.
I moved to California a year ago to be with my wife will she attends grad school and I have been appalled at the insanity that regularly occurs in this state as compared to anywhere the East coast.
1) Freely available educational material is fantastic.
2) Having the government pay for freely available educational material that will not necessarily be used by the college courses they are intended for is bad.
3) Forcing professors to use the state-sponsored books would be even worse. The Government can't get anything right, so I certainly wouldn't want some bureaucrat deciding what books were going to be used in a course I was taking.
4) This state doesn't need to spend any more money on anything. Period. They need to get their spending under control before trying to enhance things. 10%+ sales tax? Very bad! And I can hardly wait to see my income taxes for the past year.
Summary:
This is a terrible idea. The CA state government needs to start thinking about NOT defaulting rather than blowing money on ridiculous schemes with no payoff.
There are already some freely available texts anyway, from programs pioneered by top universities. Why not incentivize things like that rather than trying to take more under the government umbrella?