UC Davis Solving the Education Crisis

One Textbook at a Time

by David Chan

My family and I have lived in Davis for roughly seven years now. I’ve been told by many “long-timers” why Davis is such a wonderful place to live … culturally, environmentally, and intellectually. I was recently reminded of the intellectual part after reading an article in The Sacramento Bee. The headline read “School Districts Allowed to Delay Updating Textbooks“.

The article was about how the Elk Grove school district would be delaying adopting new textbooks until 2013. Apparently, most school districts must adopt new books within 2 to 3 years. Millions of dollars are set aside in the budget for just such renewals. Obviously, because of the short fall in California’s budgets, cut backs were in the cards at Elk Grove,including staff layoffs. As a result of negotiations, the Elk Grove school district would be able to delay purchasing new books and use the money instead to save jobs. However, the downside is that by the time new books are adopted some schools may be using 9 year old history books or 15 year old math books.

I’m a career technologist who believes that many industries, including the publishing industry, need significant overhaul. The textbook publishers have held on to such a closed network for a very long time, as have the real estate and music industries. The education market would be positively impacted through an information alliance or data exchange between writers, teachers, publishers, students and many more collaborators with skills and
experiences.

UC Davis has taken a unique approach to solving this crisis. After the jump, learn more about how our best and brightest could work collaboratively to create the next generation of educational materials.  Like many “old school” industries, textbook publishers have tried to hold on to every last bit of control, including overcharging for outdated textbooks. However, the Internet has conspired to change this market dynamic, both in its ferocity and velocity.

UC Davis’s approach to solving the “pricey textbook” problem was reported in an article published by The Davis Enterprise, “Professors Hope to Turn Page on Pricey Textbooks“. I read that UC Davis professors have come up with a unique way to make textbooks more affordable. The article, written by Caitlin Cobb, goes on to say “Expensive, used textbooks have long been a bone of contention among college students.” What an understatement!

I don’t purport to know the education market, but it seems to me that their unique idea of collaborating on a “wiki-like” textbook between multiple authors would be both timely and cost-effective. Think about the implications of this novel idea.  Students have the most up to date information and data and it costs so much less than buying a hard / soft bound copy of a book. The Davis Enterprise went on to say that the collaboration was amongst students  and multiple colleges and universities around the country.

Andrew Waldron, a UC Davis Professor of Mathematics, was quoted as saying “Students have to spend a lot of money on textbooks, and publishers will come out with a new version of the textbook, but really they are just playing around with the used book market.”

The fact is, information today is fluid and dynamic. The ubiquity of the Internet screams for information flow and collaboration. If you extend the concept further, a partnership with The Printer, FedEx/Kinko’s or another local print house would also  create an easy “one click” printed version for those students who really prefer a hard copy of a textbook AND likely at 1/2 the cost of the “publisher’s version.”

A collaborative textbook is a product whose time has come. You give intellectual power to a collective whole, rather than a select few. This really changes the way in which we view how education should be thought of … as life experience where we all have something to contribute. In fact, this idea would engage our students at a much higher level than ever before. They would take more ownership of the learning process and, heck, might even learn and retain more.

Isn’t this what higher education is all about? In the meantime, college students AND public school districts could also save a lot of money.  Shouldn’t we be embracing the 21st century, rather than running from it.