Books in the Digital Age by John B. Thompson

Author:John B. Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

(2) The curriculum

The field is differentiated not only in terms of the kinds of institutions which students attend but also in terms of the curriculum. In all colleges and universities, most subjects tend to be taught in a progressive and cumulative fashion, beginning with broader and more introductory courses in the freshman year, more focused (or ‘gateway’) courses in the sophomore year, followed by more specialized courses in the junior and senior years. In psychology, for example, a student will typically take a basic ‘intro psych’ course in the freshman year, followed by gateway courses in subjects such as social psychology, child psychology and abnormal psychology in the sophomore year, followed by more specialized courses in the junior and senior years. By the time students reach the graduate level, it is generally assumed that they understand the basic principles and concepts of the subject and that they can engage with problems, issues and theories at a more advanced level. Publishers hoping to secure adoptions for textbooks have to ensure that their texts are carefully geared to the needs and background knowledge of students at specific levels of the curriculum. Moreover, in the American higher education system students often take courses in subjects in order to gain credits and fulfil certain requirements even though they do not intend to major in that subject; in such cases they may be less likely to buy books for these courses, and more likely to sell them back when they've finished the course.

In the previous chapter we saw how the dynamic of the field of higher education publishing has forced the big textbook publishers to concentrate their efforts on the lower levels of the curriculum, on the large freshman intro courses and the sophomore gateway courses, where the student numbers are largest and where there is more comparability in terms of pedagogical content from one institution to another. Given the levels of investment required for the core textbooks and their packages and given the costs involved in sustaining a substantial force of college travellers, it is only at the lower levels of the curriculum that one can hope to achieve the kinds of print-runs necessary to achieve a profitable return. The big textbook publishers do move higher up the curriculum and are willing to publish for junior and senior courses and even for graduate courses if the numbers of students involved are sufficient to justify the investment. But textbooks aimed at upper-level courses will generally be given less attention by the sales team, and the publisher is more likely to rely on comping rather than the face-to-face methods of the college travellers to sell these books.

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