Comment by deckar01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deckar01 | Hacker News Reader

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It has been getting worse recently. Publishers are encouraging institutions to adopt programs that use dark patterns to force students to *rent* ebooks for the same price as purchasing textbooks new. The default release date for telling the student what book to buy is the first day of class, but reading and homework is assigned that same day. Unless you want to go in person to a book store and wait in a long line (or rent the ebook) you are going to be a week behind schedule waiting for a used book to ship from an independent marketplace.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/07/inclusive-acc...

More recently I was required to purchase an ebook that included online tests and homework hosted by the publisher. There is no 3rd party marketplace for that content. There is no way to get a refund if you do not use it. Publishers are allowing professors to outsource basically all of their lesson planning and content development responsibilities and pass the cost off to students. To add insult to injury, that product is setup to allow each institution to be the sole distributor of the license to their students and charge an additional markup to mail you a physical card containing the product activation code and offer no digital delivery option.

https://www.oercommons.org/about

I used to work in the textbook industry.

I’m going back to school.

My networking course recently changed from CCNA to CompTIA network plus content.

I complained that I pay tuition and my coursework labs and tests for over 85% of the marks, are all done via CompTIAs cloud service. And this costs over $200.

On top of this, CompTIA charges the school thousands of dollars a year for the right to teach their content.

So I quit. If I wanted my network + cert, I’d self study and take the tests myself.

Western Governor's University [1] is a good deal for IT-related online degrees. They are $3920 per 6 month term, no matter how many or few classes you take that term. You can take the tests for most classes without having taken the class and get credit for passing, so if you already know a subject required for the degree would can satisfy the requirement that way.

The cost of certifications that you earn along the way are included in the $3920.

Here's a page about their IT degrees from WGU Washington [2].

As an example of the certifications included, here is what they bachelor's degree in network operations and security includes: CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+, CompTIA Project+, CompTIA IT Operations Specialist, CompTIA Secure Infrastructure Specialist, Axelos ITIL®1 Foundation, LPI Linux Essentials, Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), Amazon AWS SysOps Administration-Associate, and Amazon AWS Cloud Practitioner.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University

[2] https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/it-certifications.html

I have a degree from an accredited online institution, and it holds literally no sway at tech companies. In fact, it’s a hindrance. I was self taught before I got the degree, and while you still won’t get past HRs screening for most interesting jobs, you will, at least, get industry props for being a “go getter”. With the degree I’ve hit more glass walls and ceiling’s because it’s not from a “good school”, and in their eyes I am no longer self taught either.

Think long and hard about doing an online degree, and what you think it’ll do for you.

I appreciate this comment. Being an "adult student" (30s+) is a rough road and I definitely understand the attraction of self-paced online degrees. That WGU includes certifications as part of its tuition is pretty appealing too. I'm slowly trying to whittle down community college credits so I can hopefully transfer to a state school, but it often feels like a helpless situation. I'm just grateful I don't have children - work, bills, and a wife are hard enough to juggle as it is.

Which online university? I think that's really weird that you've had that experience. Can you share specific examples of what problems having a "bad" degree has caused vs. having no degree at all?

My last internship was working on a textbook publishing tool. The whole reason I took the job is that it allowed authors and small teams to create beautiful books, publish them independently, and push updates rather than sell new editions. It did not take long for the big publishers that were partnered to cut off independent publisher access and continue rereleasing small revisions as new editions that had to be purchased at full price. * Some speculation, but this was the optics.

> My networking course recently changed from CCNA to CompTIA network plus content.

Wow, did the school just decide that they didn't want anyone taking the networking course?

Cisco changed the certificates but not the names, the low-level certs like CCNA are now on the same level as Network+ rather than being more valuable.

It seems the online quiz/testing racket, that is only available with the ebook license, is just the response to the fact that there is a vibrant ebook/textbook piracy community.

I don't really get why this is even a hard thing, surely there is some wordpress/whatever "quiz" plugin that the teachers can use to copy/paste multiple choice question/answers in and the school can pay the minimal fees to host for all their classes.

Textbooks were a scam 25 years ago when I went to school, but many of them were sub $40 or so, and could be picked up for ~$20 used. A few of the science engineering texts were closer to $100 but it was rare to spend more than ~$200 a semester on books.

Frankly, students can organize for all kinds of social issues, I'm shocked they can't organize to force the school to assure that prof's aren't playing into the textbook scams that seem common now. A bit of student fee to host a couple year old quiz server, and download PDF copies of class notes/etc seems like it should be doable. Particularly considering all the schools which have been providing online courseware for 20+ years now, frequently complete with free textbooks/lecture notes/etc.

There are quiz things. The online textbook ones do more than multiple choice like you can have questions where students enter a formula, or they deal with questions where students might have to enter a number but they need to account for students rounding etc. They also can randomize questions or parts of questions so Joe sees "Kelly has 8 balls" and Sally sees "Kelly has 5". But there are open source systems like LON-CAPA that will do all that too. But the book published ones come with giant quiz banks full with questions relevant to the subject/book used while the open source ones require you to make your own or scour for other people's. The school also doesn't have to host it. And of course no one needs to mark it except in the situations where it fucks up. It's an attractive cheap solution for schools and departments at the cost of the students which kinda sucks.

Course notes are typically posted by the prof if they want on services like Blackboard or Brightspace or Moodle. My university student union had a random PC with an old exam bank.

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