Physics students at North Carolina State University can get their introductory-level textbooks for free thanks to a new program by the college.
Each year about 1,300 students at North Carolina State take Physics 211 and Physics 212. Beginning this semester, the university’s libraries and physics department have offered the courses’ textbook online for free. Students can also print pages of the text or buy a printed copy at the university’s bookstore for about $45.
Michael A. Paesler, head of the physics department at North Carolina State, said his department wanted to find a cost-effective way for students to get course material and felt an online option might work well. The department hopes to offer more material online, including an optics text written by Mr. Paesler to be used for a course next semester.
“This is just the way students nowadays communicate and apply learning,” Mr. Paesler said. “So we thought this would not be an obstacle to their learning — indeed, it might be a better way to learn.”
North Carolina State University Libraries paid about $1,500 to purchase the site license for the textbook, published by Physics Curriculum & Instruction. Greg Raschke, who managed the physics project for the libraries, said the libraries would like to make more textbooks available online for students.
“We’ve gotten feedback from parents, from students, that textbook costs are too high,” said Mr. Raschke, the libraries’ associate director for collections and scholarly communication. “So be able to do something about that is nice.”
10 Responses to North Carolina State U. Gives Students Free Access to Physics Textbook Online
commentarius - February 12, 2010 at 6:27 pm
A nice experiment but obviously not scalable. Think how many textbooks are required at a large research university. And why should the library foot this bill? Every dollar spent helping students avoid paying for textbooks is a dollar not spent on building a lasting research collection, which is what libraries are for. Textbooks are ephemeral, replaced every few years with “new” editions that then have to be bought to fulfill rising expectations. This is a potential black hole of money that is already in very short supply.
ray31 - February 12, 2010 at 8:23 pm
If only 50 students out of 1000 plus purchase the textbook, they can easily recoup the cost in one semester. This could be profitable. It’s a lot better than paying $100 for a hardcover textbook or $60 bucks for temporary access to an etextbook.
midtownlabgeek - February 13, 2010 at 12:06 pm
It doesn’t say how much of the money came from library funds. $1500 for 1300 students? That’s a fraction of the lab fees they’re already paying as a science course.The general chemistry text we’ve been using has gone up $30-40/year, breaking $200 this fall. That’s “obviously not scalable” either, particularly for “disadvantaged” or “nontraditional” students. The article doesn’t present this as a universal solution, but it’s a very interesting possibility.
rbateman - February 15, 2010 at 8:53 am
Um, North Carolina State University IS a large research university with a major engineering school.
lsuagecon - February 15, 2010 at 9:56 am
If you want new, timely, relevant, exciting textbooks a major change in the law is nesessary because textbooks are expensive to write and publish. It takes 3-5 years to write a quality textbook and two years to have it published. The authors recieve about minimum wage and the textbook publisher must recoup their costs in about two years before the used book market eliminates any new book sales. If you want to lower the cost of textbooks, change the law to require all sales of books(new and used) return 10% of the sale price to the authors and 20% to the publisher. As a result, students will have more, better and cheaper textbooks!
davidafoster - February 15, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Lsuagecon, I appreciate your comment and have a question I’d love to ask you offline. If you’d email me at foster dot elearn at gmail dot com, I’d appreciate it.
jlaster - February 16, 2010 at 10:51 am
midtownlabgeek: Good question. The libraries paid for the textbook – they acquired the site license and the materials became part of their collection. -Jill Laster
carolpm - February 17, 2010 at 2:08 pm
I agree with the comment that publishers and authors are entitled to remuneration when books are offered online by a college or library. One reason textbook costs are so high is that publishers must break even within first two years of publication; thereafter used book sales drastically reduce publishers’ revenue. When the used book market was not as organized as it is today, publishers calculated book prices based on a return on investment over a 4-5 year period. If students did not resell their books and publishers could count on steady sales for 4-5 years, publishers could afford to put much lower sticker prices on them. None of the money made by used book sales goes back to the publisher to recoup development, marketing, and production costs. And authors don’t get a dime. However well intentioned, efforts to digitize books and offer them to students for free will force publishers to put even higher pricetags on new books. Free books threaten to put academic publishers out of business. Many textbook publishers offer an ebook option; often students can purchase an ebook for half the cost of a printed book. Ebooks are cheaper than print texts (no shipping, no bookstore profiteering, trees saved!) and offer features that facilitate learning (hyperlinked exercises, answers, glossaries, links to supporting websites and original research) and teaching (gradebooks, the ability to customize lessons, access to artwork, etc.). Developing an ebook entails the same costs as developing a print text (peer reviews, editing, art development and rendering, and marketing, to name a few) as well as additional costs (hyperlinking, beta-testing, animations and tutorials, interface development). Ebooks can be sold more cheaply because the costs of printing, paper, and binding, shipping,and bookstore profiteering are taken out of the equation. The key to keeping ebook cost down is to ensure that each student pays for access. Ebook sharing and free online books force publishers to amortize the cost of ebook development over fewer copies.
stevefoerster - February 19, 2010 at 5:28 pm
carolpm write that “Free books threaten to put academic publishers out of business.” But academic publishers clearly don’t care about providing a fair price to students, so I say good riddance. If free textbook projects can provide good instructional materials for students, then there’s no reason for educators to do anything but embrace them, regardless of the consequences to “buggy whip maker” publishers.
intplibrarian - February 23, 2010 at 3:48 pm
commentarius: How is it not scalable? Site licenses are generally priced according to the size of the institution. It’s not any different than the library offering online subscriptions. You didn’t think the library paid the same about for a journal as you an individual does, did you?midtownlabgeek: It says the library paid for the site license. That means 100% most likely.jlaster: No, having a site license to a book online does NOT mean that the library “owns” the material. They are probably leasing it. It depends on the publisher.carolpm: This isn’t making the book free. It’s making it free TO the students. It’s still paid for.