<story><title>U.S. Congress Renews $5M Open Textbook Pilot for Second Year</title><url>https://sparcopen.org/news/2018/open-textbooks-pilot-fy19/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>skh</author><text>I teach mathematics at a community college.  The content I cover has a very slow rate of change.  There is no valid educational reason for textbooks to cost so much in my area or to change from year to year.  I decided some years ago stop using paid materials on my courses.&lt;p&gt;I create most of the content myself.  I have my own problem sets with solutions and create almost all of my own lectures.  It was a lot of work to get everything to the point of being able to stop using paid materials but the up front work pays dividends in making my job a lot easier now.&lt;p&gt;I don’t know how feasible this is for other areas but in mathematics it is.  The problem with open textbooks that I’ve seen is that they tend not to be done well.  I’ve found a few open textbooks in math that are very well done.  The nice thing is that when you find one that is done well you won’t ever have change books.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Congress Renews $5M Open Textbook Pilot for Second Year</title><url>https://sparcopen.org/news/2018/open-textbooks-pilot-fy19/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Someone1234</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad something is being done. But while the public continues to blame the lightning-rods instead of the actual source of the issue, the problem will continue.&lt;p&gt;What I mean is that book publishers take the blame, and LIKE to take the blame, because that takes heat off the actual bad guys in this story: college professors and their departments.&lt;p&gt;It is they that decide which books are used in what courses, and it is they that are given the public trust to protect student&amp;#x27;s education. Instead they value the kickbacks (in the form of offloaded workload, free materials, free automated testing, etc) over what&amp;#x27;s best for their students.&lt;p&gt;It is an inherent moral failing in US academia where the almighty dollar has yet again wrecked havoc.&lt;p&gt;Open textbooks won&amp;#x27;t succeed for the same reason that cheaper textbooks haven&amp;#x27;t, the gatekeeps, the ones that create the artificial monopoly for particular textbooks: professors&amp;#x2F;departments, will continue to act in a self-interested and immoral way, and the public will continue to blame publishers.</text></comment>