Question

1. All university instructors prepare courses to be taught but only a few write the textbooks to be used in these courses.   

a. Since textbook prices have risen so much, why don’t more professors write competing textbooks?

b. Because textbook prices have risen so much, SGU is asking professors create the content for their courses instead of requiring a publisher textbook. How do you think these will compare to publisher textbooks?

Answer 1

Ok. Let met take you through it.

a.

1. A text book is a physical product, made up of paper, printing, jacketing or hard-board covering, etc. We have also witnessed in the labor costs rising up sharping in the past. Typical text books are bound to become expensive.
2. Contemporary Publishers have started finding it relatively less profitable or even unprofitable to print and sell the conventional books. Along with rising costs, they have a whole list of reasons.
3. Readers or students also have their own troubles with rising cost of education, including that of the printed books. The for evolution of mobile technology and internet, they have found the content available on internet to be a good alternative to text books.
4. Therefore, demand for traditional text books is rapidly going down across the globe.
5. Content on internet is posing a unavoidable threat upon publishers' community round the world.
6. You see, professors' personal urge for writing a full-fledged text book is to earn name and fame along with the royalties. With textbooks' prices rising continuously and so with the competition among publishers, professors' urge for writing textbooks is further marred by the lowering demand in the market. This is the reason why writing textbooks has no longer remained an compelling idea for professors.

b.

1. Creating content has been new wave in the universities for several reasons.
2. Every university develops its own academic plan for the each course offered by it. But you see several courses seem to be almost identical across different universities. Professors from different universities recommending the same publishers' text book to their students, actually does not bring them a sense of uniqueness.
3. Students also feel excited about when they are reading something unique and especially designed for them.
4. A university also earns uniqueness amongst the competing universities, when its courses developed by its professors are copyrighted. We have seen many universities printing their own textbooks containing the content developed by their own professors, alumni and even some of their brightest students.
5. Publishers' text books may be generalized. For example, let us say, the university SGU teaches topics namely A, B, C and D whereas another university teaches topics namely B, C, D and E in a similar course. Now publishers will print the text book keeping topic A, B, C, D and E in order to satisfy the students of both the universities. Every single time a student is shelling out money for purchasing a copy of publisher text book, he will be paying for the prining cost of one topic extra, no matter which universitiy he/she belongs to. In case of professors' developed content, on the other hand, this problem gets solved before no professor will develop the content of the topic which is not to be taught by him in the class.
6. Often the universities, which develop their own course, integrate the printing cost of their inhouse developed contents with their lumpsum course fee itself. Not only it becomes economical for students, it looks like 'being offered for free' with the course. This, however, never happens in case of publishers' text books.