LegacyDL: Here's how it works:

- Professor tells students about required text for class

- Students go to the book store and find out the book is expensive

- Some tech savvy student soon finds the book in pdf format online and distributes the book to their classmates

- Students upload pdf to their mobile device and cheat during tests

So effectively the students are reading the book, they just happen to do it while the examination is being taken.

Gogo multitasking!

When I went to school back in the Iron Age, (two years ago, when only the early adopters had smartphones) no one ever did that, and the professors were smart enough to know what was going on if they saw students looking at their phones frequently during tests.

Barakku: Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?
I forget who said that.
/No really, it was Einstein

it's more than memorizing though, it's about understanding the basics of how our reality works, and it's every bit as important as reading Great Expectations.

7473r4: If college professors assign books and expect their students to read them for a decent grade, then students will read the books unless said professor is an absolute pushover doormat who hands out A's like a sex ed teacher hands out condoms largely drop or fail the class, which can lead to repercussions for the professor because the university needs lots of tuition money.

fixed for accuracy.

professors that are pushovers are generally a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

Xcott: Nakito: Someday, of course, you will be on an airliner in which a subroutine in the engine-out rudder-adjustment algorithm in the fly-by-wire controller was coded by one of them. As the rudder hits the stop and the vertical stabilizer snaps off, you can think to yourself, "Oooh, shiny!"

Yes. And if you have the audacity to complain about it, youngsters will call you a butthurt old fuddy-duddy who just doesn't understand that millenials just have a different way of doing things.

Yeah, the complete lack of plane crashes, engineering disasters, and other horrific accidents really shows that the old guard has the best way of doing things.

limeyfellow: We had that problem when I went back to university to study electrical engineering. It was scary when you asked have you finished the book yet and they give a blank look with the stare "what book?" Somehow they still let some of these people pass, but I guess there is a reason there is a 50% dropout rate at most places.

They hated it when I took history classes, because apparently a Bachelors in Archaeological Sciences wasn't considered good enough to skip Western Civilisations or even basic chemistry. Luckily nowadays the young people coming to the US aren't so hampered and they will accept some British courses.

When I went to college -- about a decade ago -- for humanities classes we'd cover 2 books a week, for science classes about 50-100 pages of the text a week.

Then there was grad school. "hey memorize the power point slides"

tl;dr

Wait, they'll no longer be obligated to purchase the out-of-print, out-of-date volume (new edition!) authored by the professor of their class at fixed prices? For shame, colleges! For shame!

Mentat:
No, CM was short and easy, just boring. Das Capital is what happens when Moby Dick has sex with The Wealth of Nations.

+1...now seeing some very perverse images in my mind...
I really must sit myself down and learn photoshop.

I don't really understand what TFA is talking about. My history classes require about 6-10 books each, and the professors expect me to read them all.

This seems like a good thread to mention this novel:

Link (new window)

Somebody has imagined a future in which college students can major in Images and minor in Assertiveness.

eraser8: Are books -- at the least the non-technical sort (novels, histories, philosophies) -- as they've been formatted for the past several hundred years really that important to civilization or education?

Is there a way to read the works of Nabokov or Hume (to name two) without looking at an actual text? There isn't, and having some idea of what these people did, and why their work was important, is part of what's required of someone who wishes to be considered well educated.

Young people are perfectly capable of reading and educating themselves in what interests them. The internet makes that easier than ever before. Few undergraduates in their right mind are interested in reading monographs on modern philosophy.

Author of TFA sounds bitter that the presumably fairly bright undergrads forced to take his classes at a presumably fairly selective university put in a bare minimum of effort at reading the unreadable books he wants them to read. The fact is that they have far better things to do with their time. Doing the assignments and research for classes they find more rewarding is one. Working to help pay their tuition, contributing more to human happiness by serving people coffee and fried food in one shift than their professor has in his entire career, is another.

therhinodep: More importantly, will paper textbook publishers still be able to charge ridiculous prices for their products, while giving kickbacks to professors who require students to buy them?

I hope you don't/didn't piss off your own professors as much as you've just pissed off any professors on Fark.

First semester in college. Still stunned that textbooks cost so daggum much.

/Love college
//So many lovely distractions

These "tech savvy" kids in college aren't savvy enough to buy their books online? Give me a break! That's where I get all mine, and I save 50%-75% off the bookstore price.

No. Books won't go away. Yes. Students must read literature (philosophy, novels, poetry). It is what helps them understand what being a human being is. We lose that--we lose. Period.

Attention span of 140 characters

If nothing else, try rapidshare and other non-torrent sites. They tend to have plenty of books.

Here is a professor who once held and then refused a line.



Hotter than grapeshot.

For some classes, like International Law, you really do need to read an absolute metric farkton of literature/opinions/cases. For other classes, like most introductory history classes, you really should only be working off a textbook and small selections of period works that reflect the topic being covered. Honestly, most "Intro" courses are poorly served by requiring students to read lots of books, because most books really are exceedingly redundant.

Ramp up the reading requirements in more advanced classes, where there is both the time and the desire to go more in-depth. In introductory classes, however, excessive reading requirements only bore the students and drive them away from the subject.

I think it really depends on the subject/medium. In my classes, 9/10 of the books were literally page upon page of dumbed-down "examples" and "analogies" for stuff that was straight-forward enough given a one or two sentence description of the topic. I realized early on that a 10-minute wikipedia search on the title of the chapter would get me through the next month of class, and I would understand the material better than pretty much everyone else in class struggling through the book chapters.
On the other hand, stuff like calc 3 and linear algebra really required dense, instructional and step-by-step instructions for every kind of problem, and then a 10 page dense proof where you had to study every single line to get it. History was the same way, where skimming something made me lose track of what was really going on. To each his own.

Mentat: GaryPDX: Maybe they should just stick to teaching Marxism.

I actually read the Communist Manifesto in college. I thought it was the most boring book I had ever read... until I tried to read Das Capital. Good lord.

The funny part is that the manifesto is a pamphlet you retard. It is made to fit in a worker's pocket and to be discussed in factories during work time. If you can;'t get through it you have brain damage, essentially.

I was reading at a high school level by age 6 or 7, so I find this discussion extremely amusing. I will admit that I read a lot less books than I used to, but then again I've pretty much run out of the better classic science fiction, and there simply isn't enough new material to keep me going (I can easily read a 500-page book in a couple days).

Of course, I don't have a Facebook or Myspace account, and I don't text anyone on my phone, so that probably contributes to my ability to concentrate.

j0ndas: I was reading at a high school level by age 6 or 7, so I find this discussion extremely amusing. I will admit that I read a lot less books than I used to, but then again I've pretty much run out of the better classic science fiction, and there simply isn't enough new material to keep me going (I can easily read a 500-page book in a couple days).

Quality. Quantity.
There is a difference.

sweet jesus. more derp from academia's Luddites. they should know better.

They are almost as bad as die-hard republicans, all trying to return to a mythical golden age that never actually existed where students' unwavering attention and respect drove humanity to untold intellectual and moral heights. bullshiat.

I can tell you now that a college graduate now has learned exponentially more than a college graduate did 15 years ago. Hell, I was learning calculus in high school that my parents had never even seen before, and they have masters degrees. My access to research material was unbelievably good too; with a computer and an access code I could look at journals and order books through the Inter-library network in minutes, and have the books delivered in a day or two. A student 10 years ago would have spent ten days to find a tenth of the information.

Normal people don't get super pumped about reading Heidegger and Marx and Nietzsche because that shiat is dense and frankly they were sort of bad at writing. I read plenty of books that I liked in college, but a few of them were simply hard to get through. They were hard for any undergrad. That's just how it is/was/will always be

Learning should ideally hit that perfect balance of boring and frustrating.

GaryPDX: Maybe they should just stick to teaching Marxism.

Lulz.

"Distracted" my ass. What the author means here is "undisciplined" and "lazy."

We aren't talking about, "I assigned Moby Dick and they only read the hunting scenes." Last year I taught a practical statistics course with a textbook/manual integrated with software and with data sets. (And no, it's not hellishly expensive.) So the homework would be to read a chapter, perform an analysis of a data set you were provided following step-by-step instructions in the book, and bring the results -- on your laptop -- to class, where we could discuss and go on to the next step.

Ten person class, two students did the "reading." The others did not buy the textbook.

And here's something else: The students who did the work were the two guys in the class, whereas the eight women somehow thought they were going to get away without doing any work all semester. Don't tell me that men have some cognitive superiority at math; they just are willing to do the assignments.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that this actually happened, as a female math prof. ....

therhinodep: More importantly, will paper textbook publishers still be able to charge ridiculous prices for their products, while giving kickbacks to professors who require students to buy them?

Thank you for blaming the right people.

/college bookstore employee
//tired of people thinking our entire operation is a scam targeting broke students

whammer: The truth is that books have three strikes against them. The first is that most books are fully of linguistic "fill", grammatical static with little or no content. If you consolidate the important ideas from most textbooks, you are left with a pamphlet.

The second is that reading problems, like dyslexia, are quite common, and happen in degrees. This means that perhaps even the majority of students will be inhibited from reading to some degree, as it is difficult for them beyond content and grammar. They do not want to do it because they do not enjoy the process.

The third problem is that text is inherently a less efficient way of conveying ideas than are other media. A picture truly can be worth a thousand words. And often, text is associated with the context of the time in which it was written. Unless you share a common culture with the author, subtleties and passing references will be missed.

The exception to all of these are poetry and prose, the very purpose of which are contained in all the text. But they are only a fraction of higher studies.

You used a lot of words to say something that makes no sense. All texts are either poetry(verse) or prose, so what other types of texts are their that I'm missing? Technical writing is prose.

FredaDeStilleto: Three years ago, Weidenfeld & Nicolson launched its Compact Editions series of classics such as Vanity Fair and Moby-Dick. T

Reader's Digest had condensed books in the early '60's, so that's not indicative of the ADD approach to the written word.

Reading something other than comics needs to begin early - my kids all read by the time they were 3. From the time they were very young, we would sit at breakfast and I would tell a story. Left the with a cliffhanger that would be continued the next day.

Start the kids early.

Comic books are a wonderful tool for introducing reading to children and adults. Even more fun is whiting out all the dialogue in the balloons in a comic then re-write it about yourself. Good fun indeed.

You can either have great depth of study or great breadth of study. Most universities are currently of the opinion that the latter option results in a more "well-rounded" graduate. I have yet to find anybody that finds this roundness to be usefull, but the People In Charge have decided that spherocity is what's important.

skinink: Now get off of my lawn!

If I ever have to teach an English literature class I will fail anyone I catch with a version of Cliff's Notes.

/Physics major, so probably won't ever have to worry about it

j0ndas: I was reading at a high school level by age 6 or 7, so I find this discussion extremely amusing. I will admit that I read a lot less fewer books than I used to, but then again I've pretty much run out of the better classic science fiction, and there simply isn't enough new material to keep me going (I can easily read a 500-page book in a couple days).

Of course, I don't have a Facebook or Myspace account, and I don't text anyone on my phone, so that probably contributes to my ability to concentrate.

Uh huh.

soze: Will schools stop watering down the curriculum for the tuition money? Will institutions start being more than just daycare for 20-year-olds?

My university recruits students based on the 'precious snowflake' model, and we get a lot of students (not all) that simply do not know how to learn for themselves. Many of these students have come from high schools where teachers drill facts into their heads so that state proficiency exam scores come out well. Basically, they learn how to take a canned exam where the content and questions are known. They preview that content for a year, take practice exams, learn tricks about taking a multiple choice test, and then take the exam. It is all given to them, up front.

So, a lot of students come to the university thinking that they're geniuses for having regurgitated canned information well. Intro level courses reinforce this. They have, mostly, not yet learned how to think critically on their own. Lots of profs complain about this and most just chalk it up to students being dumber than in the past, without stopping to think that 'hey, maybe these people in my class have a different way of learning.' These profs either try to force students to learn, or stop trying altogether.

When (most) profs adopt a text for a course, they do so because it is important to use that text in order to learn the course content. It is important to read it, learn it and ask questions about it. To many students that is a foreign concept. Texts are always overpriced and are also worthless if they aren't used. The better profs on my campus take the time to show their classes how to do these things.

You mentioned watering down of the curriculum, and that's what I started to reply to. I agree. The 'precious snowflake' comment I made is a problem because at the end of the semester, a prof who holds the line gets poor evaluations. If that prof. is not tenured but is teaching the way they learned themselves, it's adios, muchacho(a). The way to avoid this situation is to play it safe, water things down, and make everybody happy. Happiness = student retention = $$ over 4 years(about $120k here), which administrators like. Student learning doesn't enter into the equation much; student happiness therefore drives much of the curriculum, at least at my university. Edutainment works.

/prof
//Publishers are giving kickbacks? I had no idea....where do I sign up?
//standing down, now

the most distracted generation in history

How many generations has this been said about? The laziest, the dumbest, and yet somehow human society hasn't crumbled into bits.

MadSkillz: I find I have trouble concentrating on these textbooks in accounting. Truthfully, a lot of the ideas could be better organized in point form. The writers seem to get lost in how much they love their own words, so you end up with a whole chapter to explain something that can be distilled, without losing any significant information, into a paragraph. It's really lame. The worst was Accounting Theory. Holy hell what a terrible book.


I had an object oriented programming textbook that sounded like your accounting book. It felt as if it took ages just to get to the important points. The information was peppered through long paragraphs about the author's personal experiences which I didn't care about. It felt like I was reading a horrible blog, which made me struggle through that class. That was about 8 years ago.


/failed at college
//Have attention issues, but am willing to admit they are MY problem and not going to blame anyone else
///friends who have graduated are either still unemployed, are frequently laid off, or still work at their 'college' job

I had at least two professors in college that not only required you to buy the current edition of their textbook, they required you to buy it at the bookstore, and had the bookstore keep a list of people who had bought their book there. I said screw it and bought a past edition on amazon for a few bucks, and the professor actually threatened to disenroll me from the class.

College these days is an absolute joke. I found that to pass, you could go to all the classes, or read all the coursework, but there was no need to do both. Granted I coasted through with a C average, but I did absolutely zero work, and came out with the same degree everyone else did.

Chemguy:
The 'precious snowflake' comment I made is a problem because at the end of the semester, a prof who holds the line gets poor evaluations. If that prof. is not tenured but is teaching the way they learned themselves, it's adios, muchacho(a). The way to avoid this situation is to play it safe, water things down, and make everybody happy.

You can definitely hold the line and enforce high standards as long as you set clear expectations, teach students how to meet those expectations, and stay consistent with the way you reward and punish people. I have a reputation for offering hard courses, and about 10-15% of my students will drop after the first meeting for any class, but I also have really strong evaluations and a track record of sending students on to grad school with hefty financial aid. Most people appreciate high standards as long as you give them a reason to work hard and don't jerk them around.

(Also, whoever made the comment above about professors getting a kickback on textbook assignments is obviously not a professor. Most publishers won't even give me a desk copy to teach the course if I don't pass their minimum enrollment quotas to justify giving away a freebie.)

My daughter is taking a college statistics class and the instructor does not require a book. He just starts talking about statistics. She asked him about a textbook because she wasn't getting as much insight as she felt she needed from his lectures. He said, "There's lots of books about statistics out there. Just get one." I gave her my old probability and statistics book.

I'm going back to school to get my Ph.D. and I'm finding that the price of engineering books hasn't changed much in 20 years. Now you just go to Amazon and find a cheap used one. I never sold an engineering book. You should see my library.

GaryPDX: Maybe they should just stick to teaching Marxism.

I always guessed you were an uneducated waste of flesh. Your gross incompetence towards higher learning serves only to prove such.

President_Rexall: Granted I coasted through with a C average, but I did absolutely zero work, and came out with the same degree everyone else did.

but not the same resume

Bring it on, you senile farkfaces. They call me the readin' machine!

/and I'm most distracted.

President_Rexall: I had at least two professors in college that not only required you to buy the current edition of their textbook, they required you to buy it at the bookstore, and had the bookstore keep a list of people who had bought their book there. I said screw it and bought a past edition on amazon for a few bucks, and the professor actually threatened to disenroll me from the class.

Just got an email from a prof who laid something similar out. Only new editions from the campus bookstore are acceptable and he will be checking on the first day of class. :/

On the other hand, another prof sent out an email telling everyone to not buy the book because he wasn't going to use it, he just was departmentally required to have one listed.

office_despot: The students who did the work were the two guys in the class, whereas the eight women somehow thought they were going to get away without doing any work all semester. Don't tell me that men have some cognitive superiority at math; they just are willing to do the assignments.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that this actually happened, as a female math prof. ....

Oddly enough, I've found a similar situation in the past few semesters. Frequently, I'm the only female who has done all the assignments/extra credit/research/etc. I always wondered why that was the case, especially in such a male dominated field, knowing they have to work twice as hard.

artaith:
Just got an email from a prof who laid something similar out. Only new editions from the campus bookstore are acceptable and he will be checking on the first day of class.

This is a man who only cares about his paycheck.

On the other hand, another prof sent out an email telling everyone to not buy the book because he wasn't going to use it, he just was departmentally required to have one listed.

This is a teacher.

/Just my opinion

manimal2878: I should have specified "good prose", such as a well known, classical essay that has survived the test of time, perhaps even with its subtleties footnoted. It is a linguistic whole, not just data elements strung together in proper sentences.

For example, just getting the basic facts out of the Gettysburg address achieves little. Yet it is more than just free verse. It has a complete context unique to itself. Rewritten, even with the same technical meaning, and it loses its value.