Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Technically, I think it is up to the board what criteria they use. However, cynical as I am about this, it's inconceivable they will choose on price alone.
Despite posting with great assurance that I know what I'm talking about, you will undoubtedly agree with me that I may not. One confusion I have is that there already are free open source textbooks for many common courses. Most professors do not assign them. Why should they? If students can't afford the books, they can use reference copies most college libraries keep on reserve. We would gladly buy textbooks for our youngest now in college, but with a few exceptions that can be bought used for a couple dollars, he insists we not waste the money.
The budget for the California initiative is $25 million, or about $500,000 for each of the projected 50 books. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt this is enough to get books much better than the ones which are already free. We will see.
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Well since we are talking about education, wouldn't it be simpler to just pay 500K to the most popular book already offered in each course and then just upload the text for everyone to access? Also what about updates??
What I mean is why start from scratch when there are decent books already available.