The Case for Creative Commons Textbooks
I find the proposal for “Creative Commons” textbooks interesting because I am in the other camp – those who make money writing a book. I also do some writing for “free” – e.g., professional research publications which readers pay to read, but I write at no cost, Internet content in various formats. Perhaps “free” is not the correct word – I am also paid to be a researcher and I would not be considered successful if I did not publish (for free).
I cannot imagine a full compliment of “free” textbooks. I can imagine agencies paying for free text books to be written. I can imagine an individual here or there generating a free book. I can imagine a collection of individuals putting together a “wiki”-type book.
The proposal I link to does not actually propose “free” books. As I understand the concept, institutions would enter into a consortium that would pay individuals to author content that would be used by the instititions. I guess the idea is to eliminate the companies that now recruit authors, edit content, and print or “serve” content. Would this mean tuition would go up at these institutions to pay for the loss of teaching, research, or service time? Would it be the profs at the universities or community colleges who would generate the content? Could this consortium accomplish the various functions of a company as economically as a commercial entity? Would all participating instructors have to use the free products made available within the consortium? I do not believe there is any such thing as a free quality product, but there may be different ways to generate products.
Without arguing the cost of educational materials (which are too high, but probably for very different reasons than is commonly assumed), I wonder about the assumptions that drive this position. Perhaps educators should teach for free and write books for profit. Perhaps the profits from college athletic programs should be used to purchase books. There must be some other great ideas out there. Perhaps insitutions should purchase books directly from the commercial publisher and eliminate the profits made by campus and community book stores. Perhaps the traditional academic contract should include another category – teaching, research, service, and authoring. How about a system in which instead of spending time writing grants college faculty members write books and if a book is selected for distribution within the consortium the individual, department, and institution are compensated. 😉
