Top Hat further expands, or subdivides the OER movement; and the move doubles down on the company’s bet on faculty engagement
digital textbooks
Top Hat Marketplace: What is it and should we care?
Despite initial questions about Top Hat Marketplace, the deeper I look the more convinced I am that this is something to watch
Reprise: How Much Do Community College Students Actually Pay For Textbooks?
Last month the nonprofit advocacy group Achieving the Dream announced a new initiative to fund 38 community colleges who are willing to build entire programs with open educational resources. While this is a noble effort aimed at reducing financial barriers for students to get two-year degrees, the group perpetuated the same myth that has plagued higher education for years.
A Big Reason That Digital Textbooks Are Misunderstood
Chegg, which is in the midst of a dramatic change in their business model by moving from textbook rentals to digital student services, got slammed last week in the stock market. After reporting mixed results of better-than-expected earnings yet worse-than-expected revenues, their stock price lost 35% in one day (Feb 22). But this is not […]
Data To Back Up Concerns Of Textbook Expenditures By First-Generation Students
David Wiley has added to the conversation over use of data on college textbook pricing and student spending patterns with “The Practical Cost of Textbooks”. The key argument is to go beyond prices and spending and look at the most direct measure of asking students themselves how textbooks costs have impacted them.
Asking What Students Spend On Textbooks Is Very Important, But Insufficient
It is important to look at both types of data – textbook list prices and student expenditures – to see some of the important market dynamics at play. All in all, students are exercising their market power to keep their expenditures down – buying used, renting, borrowing, obtaining illegally, delaying purchase, or just not using at all.
Bad Data Can Lead To Bad Policy: College students don’t spend $1,200+ on textbooks
The average US college student does not spend or budget more than $1,200 for textbooks, with that number rising each year, as commonly reported in the national media. The best data available continues to show that students spend roughly half of that amount, and that number is going down over time, not up. Last spring […]