Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
A colleague recently returned from a term away from Stanford, and we briefly discussed the Department of Education's (successful) attempts to regulate the length of class sessions. (See my previous post.)
"That's nothing," he replied, and related how Congress had passed a law regulating the publication of 'subsequent editions' of textbooks.
By way of background, textbook authors and publishers love to create second, third, ... nth editions of successful textbooks. This practice compels libraries to buy the latest editions, and it can help defeat the resale-of-textbooks markets. The recent rise of "textbooks for rent" services increases the urge to "re-edition," as well. Since textbooks are often priced .. liberally (I would use the word 'outrageously,' but my publishers would object), the cost of new textbooks can add significantly to the overall cost of a college education. (I've written some textbooks, but my conscience is clear on this score; no 2nd editions for me. Not that any of my publishers have been beating down my door, demanding a second edition.)
(Parenthetically, I'll bet colleges figure their costs --- which drive what students are allowed to borrow --- based on the purchase price of textbooks. Given resale and textbooks-for-rent, that is surely padding.)
The applicable law is 20 USC, Chapter 28, Section 1015b. My colleague forwarded to me the "directive" he received from his publisher to comply with the law. It reads:
1. The Preface of every print textbook will contain a section headed “New to This Edition.” This section should be featured on the first page of the Preface.
2. “New to This Edition” copy must appear in both instructor and student versions of the book.
3. The section should contain an introductory statement summarizing the basic intent behind the revisions, followed by bullet points.
4. Each bullet point should focus on a “substantial” content revision.
5. The list of substantial revisions should have a minimum of six bullet points, in order to show that the revision is well justified.
“Substantial” means:
• Any change that impacts more than 20% of the content or feature category. Examples: “Over 20% of the research cited is from 2008 or later” or “Over 50% of the sample student essays are new to this edition.”
• Any addition, subtraction, or change in placement of chapters. Examples: a list of new chapters and reasons for the new coverage; a list of chapters moved for the purpose of better learning or based on user feedback.
• Changes in approach, tone, format, that author incorporates throughout the book – usually these are in reaction to user feedback or new trends in how the subject matter is approached by the discipline.
• Changes that impact exercises; test/quiz items; assignments; or anything that impacts what students will be studying and materials that instructors will have to update in their notes, syllabus, etc.
20 USC, Chapter 28, Section 1015b is neither this precise nor explicit. Someone, somewhere, turned the law into this "directive." It could be the publisher (the law talks about responsibilities of publishers), or perhaps --- and what I think is more likely --- the Department of Education helped us all by issuing regulations on how to comply with the new law.
To be clear, I fully appreciate that churning editions to maintain library sales and defeat the resale and rental markets is probably less than socially desirable behavior on the part of publishers/authors. Why "probably?" The economics of this, given resale markets and textbook-for-rent services, are messy; what is the socially optimal amount of "control" a publisher/author should have over their intellectual property? So I'm not ready to condemn such practices out of hand.
But I'm also less than thrilled with Congress/the Executive Branch using their power over institutions of higher education (presumably, the legal force here is the usual story of "you want to take Uncle Sam's dime, you must dance to Uncle Sam's tune") to muck around with something so close to the First Amendment and freedom of the press. Aren't there better and less intrusive ways to accomplish the aims of this legislation? Or am I being too sensitive?
- Comment (18)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (0)
Comments:
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
It never occurred to me why so many editions of textbooks are published. It was frustrating as a student to buy the fourth edition of a textbook for a course, and then discover that the professor would be teaching from the fifth edition the next quarter, rendering it near impossible to sell my lightly used book to another student.
The way my former high school addresses the problem is twofold: 1) they purchase one edition of a given textbook for every course taught, and then loan the textbooks out to students. At the end of the course, the students return the books to the classroom, and they're used a subsequent year. Students of course have to pay replacement fines for damage or loss, but this way, the school can use the same books for a number of years before they have to upgrade to a newer edition. 2) they try to find acceptable electronic textbooks for students to access from their ipads. There aren't a whole lot of good e-textbooks available yet, and they also take up a lot of memory, but I think this is a plausible longterm solution.
Mar '12
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
My college solved this problem in a few ways:
1. A copy of every text for every course was "on reserve" in the library, for students to sign out in half hour increments to read or use in the library. For books that were used for only a few excerpts, professors often encouraged us to stop by the library to read the portion.
2. Professors were fairly aware of textbook costs, and generally did their best to choose cheaper editions. They would also tell us when you could substitute any old copy of Macbeth for the special $30 critical edition from Oxford University Press that was on the book list.
3. Everyone I knew bought books used on Amazon and resold them there later, thus "renting" the books for the term for about 1/4 of their sticker price.
4. Our professors would tell us when an old edition would work as well, which it often did.
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
Madcap's comment reminded me of one trick my college professors used to help keep costs down for students: they'd create their own primers of assorted readings from other books and have the college bookstore Xerox them, cheaply bind them, and sell to students for some $20. I don't know how they skirted around copyright infringement, but I'm assuming they did since that would be a big deal at the College.
Jun '10
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
I get the point why the "new edition" game is kind of a racket. On the other hand, the bigger racket is the DOE. I'd rather have a professor making a few more bucks than have some DC bureaucrat dictating the content of textbooks. That is a far greater evil.
In other news, this is the first I've ever heard that the DOE actually does anything at all.
Mar '11
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
As with so many other branches of subsidized academia, the difficulty in the academic publishing market is not knowing where the true break-even point is.
I am more familiar with research journals, many of which also charge exorbitant subscription fees even for online-only journals, fees which are often paid by government grant money. However, high prices for popular titles are often used to defray the costs of other, less popular publications whose existence would otherwise be threatened. These are often the smaller publications which are the bread-and-butter of specialists in the field.
As an end user, it is almost impossible to determine if high prices are resulting in long-term value for the reading public, or simply enriching some former profs.
May '11
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
It is hard for me to figure out what the aim of the legislation actually was but that unfortunately is true for most regulatory schemes.
Mar '11
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
David Kreps:
But I'm also less than thrilled with Congress/the Executive Branch using their power over institutions of higher education (presumably, the legal force here is the usual story of "you want to take Uncle Sam's dime, you must dance to Uncle Sam's tune") to muck around with something so close to the First Amendment and freedom of the press. Aren't there better and less intrusive ways to accomplish the aims of this legislation? Or am I being too sensitive?
I am resigned to the reality that the federal government will have a strong influence on the peripheral private sector surrounding academia. Certainly a privately-funded university would see fit to limit the adoption of expensive "new editions" were it to defray the purchasing costs for its students. If the government is subsidizing a substantial portion of higher education, it should also take precautions that taxpayers' dollars are being spent frugally.
The obvious solution is to begin to remove public support for private higher education. In light of their heroin-like dependency on federal research and student loan dollars, this is unfortunately still a pipe dream.
Aug '10
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
tabula rasa: I get the point why the "new edition" game is kind of a racket. On the other hand, the bigger racket is the DOE. I'd rather have a professor making a few more bucks than have some DC bureaucrat dictating the content of textbooks. That is a far greater evil.
In other news, this is the first I've ever heard that the DOE actually does anything at all. · 12 minutes ago
Preach it, brother. Preach it.
Sep '11
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
I imagine Apples iBook is going to make the point of the legislation moot in the not to distant future. Pushing out updates to existing textbooks, or simply putting out a digital copy of the new edition has got to be considerably cheaper than printing the multicolor behemoths. And spending $15 instead of $75, it won't take too many book purchases for the iPad to pay for itself.
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
Unhappily, the price of textbooks is not driven solely (or even mainly) by production costs. I'm given to understand that a 600-page, one-color, hard-cover has a marginal cost to the publisher of around $20. There is a lot of price discrimination and market-power (think, monopoly) pricing that goes into the price of a textbook. For instance, I am coauthor on a book that you can buy from the publisher for $140.95, from Amazon.com for $94.16, from a seller whose orders are fulfilled by Amazon for $60, and (with, I presume, some shipping costs), from Amazon.de (German Amazon) for $26.75. Hmmm.
What little I know about the technology of these things suggests that publishers have a better shot at controlling the resale and rental of e-versions of a text than with physical books. That removes some of the incentive for publishers to charge huge prices for the "first, and largely last, press run." But it probably will not mean lower costs for most student end-users.
Mar '12
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
The problem is NOT Department of Education regulations. Subsection (i) of 28 USC section 1015B says that the Department of Education is NOT allowed to issue any regulations under that section.
The problem is Congress itself, which has decided to "solve" the problem of overpriced textbooks with this statutory section, which reads more like a regulation than a statute. And encourages / almost forces publishers to develop "guidelines" like those quoted in the main text.
Jun '10
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
Walter Stahr: The problem is NOT Department of Education regulations. Subsection (i) of 28 USC section 1015B says that the Department of Education is NOT allowed to issue any regulations under that section.
The problem is Congress itself, which has decided to "solve" the problem of overpriced textbooks with this statutory section, which reads more like a regulation than a statute. And encourages / almost forces publishers to develop "guidelines" like those quoted in the main text. · 1 minute ago
Then shame on Congress.
Mar '11
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
David Kreps
What little I know about the technology of these things suggests that publishers have a better shot at controlling the resale and rental of e-versions of a text than with physical books. That removes some of the incentive for publishers to charge huge prices for the "first, and largely last, press run." But it probably will not mean lower costs for most student end-users.
Dr. Kreps, do you see any possibility of e-books allowing textbooks to completely circumvent the large, commerical publishing houses? When you remove the infrastructure demands of physically printing books, it seems that non-profit and academic publishers could take over many of the editorial tasks and distribute the e-books directly online. I know that this model is proving successful in the world of acadmic journals.
Mar '11
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
It seems to me creative publishers will be able to get round this roadblock. Once again government intervention in a "problem" will only exacerbate it and drive costs up, not down. If colleges really cared about costs they could just refuse to play the game.
Apr '11
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
I would almost posit a theory that this is a problem caused by another: Student Loans. As it's generally assumed most students will receive loans, grants, and financial aid for their university years, then the various parties involved will want to maximize how much money they get from said loans, thus a prevalence of new editions of textbooks.
Student loan programs arise from a desire to get as many people to college as possible, as a tenuous correlation between education and income can be found.
In a sense, in trying to fix one problem, we've once again created more problems.
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
Mendel
Dr. Kreps, ... any possibility of e-books allowing textbooks to completely circumvent the large, commerical publishing houses?
Yes, but...
Yes, in the sense that it is increasingly possible for authors to create professional looking "books" and post them. I'm just finishing a textbook where I'm using a combination of TeX and Adobe Illustrator to prepare camera-ready copy. For the two ancillaries---a Student's Guide (essentially, solutions to half the problems) and an Instructor's Manual---there will be no physical book at all, just downloadable pdfs at a Stanford website. I could have done the whole book that way.
But...
1. The publisher is paying for a copyeditor, which is a valuable service, especially when considering the limited expository skills of most college professors. This could be directly outsourced, but it would be transactionally hard. (Publishers are repeat purchasers, giving them leverage over copy-editors. Authors, less so.)
2. The publisher is paying for the preparation of an index. I've indexed three previous textbooks I wrote, so I know it is a mind numbing job. Easier but still hard to outsource.
Running out of word-count---more buts to follow...
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
Continuing the buts:
Most authors write textbooks either to influence others and expand their audience, or to make money. Publishers provide advertising, go to "meetings," have traveling representatives... So whether the objective is influence or income, publishers provide authors with valuable marketing services.
In some cases, word-of-mouth will work, at least for gaining readership. The book I'm doing is for a highly specialized audience, in which word-of-mouth is likely to be very important to whether folks use it. In fact, I used this in my bargaining with the publisher, and I've got a "good" (low) price out of it---this book aims at audience, not income. But it's a special case; atypical of most college textbooks.
Bottom line is that only a small percentage of the total cost is variable, depending on how many copies are eventually sold. A lot is fixed cost, which is one reason why list price must greatly exceed marginal cost (and why resale/rental markets, leading to an inability of authors/publishers to capture some rents, threatens the current economic structure). And publishers do provide authors with some useful services.
The "buts" are pretty strong in this case.
Aug '10
Re: Freedom of the Press Meets the Department of Education
Open Source textbook publishing. Choose fields in which the information is fairly static (say, math and basic physics), where there is little dispute on content or political pressure. The government then uses very modest (to them) prizes for the best textbooks in each of those fields for various standardized courses. Set up an adjudicating board made up of professors randomly selected from the top 100 schools in the country to determine who wins the prize.
The winning textbooks are placed into the public domain. The government then ties school aid and/or student loan eligibility to the requirement that these texts be sufficient for the class in question.
A million dollar prize for each of the best standardized textbooks for first year physics, math, chemistry, biology, and geology would cost the government $5 million dollars - a pittance for the DOE. The prospect of a million dollar payday would probably generate fantastic new textbooks with innovative teaching methods, multimedia, etc. And then millions of students get free textbooks. Furthermore, you've now standardized the curriculum for basic STEM courses, which means you can open up the education field to non-traditional schools and they can compete on an even playing field.