One of my friends is taking her first college math class. Being a humanities student, she just bought her most expensive textbook yet — a 2011 edition of James Stewart's "Calculus" for $180. The past editions cost no more than $30. Some can even be downloaded online for free.
It is almost impossible for the authors to find additional material for the new editions. They simply change figures in homework problems so that students with the old versions cannot do homework. When we normally think of textbooks, we think of hard covers, artistic dust jackets and beautifully printed acid-free paper. But is it really the case that a calculus problem is better when it's in color?
I have long been bothered by the fact that economist N. Gregory Mankiw and Stewart are valued more than Karl Marx and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in terms of price. A copy of "Philosophical Writings of Leibniz" costs $4. My used 2,700-page "The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism," which contains selections from Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault, costs only one-third the price of my friend's calculus book. The funny thing is that Mankiw and Stewart did not figure out the principles of economics or rules of calculus. Though I admit that they are great professors who write impressive textbooks, I feel like they use copyright policies to steal money from poor college students. Yes, they sell important knowledge and ideas, and yes, their intellectual property should be protected. But what about our right to gain knowledge?
These ridiculous "new versions" of textbooks, which cost hundreds of dollars, make college even more expensive — especially for students in science, math and economics. I once talked with a student from Japan who went to college in Germany about university tuition in different countries. Humboldt University in Berlin charges students around $341, which is similar to most universities in Germany. She said universities in Japan cost between $6,000 to $15,000 per year. In China, the cost is between $800 and $1,600 per year.
When I told her the tuition for Brown is almost $40,000 per year — the same as many other elite universities — she looked at me as if I were joking and asked, "Are American colleges that good?" Honestly, I do not know. I also did not tell her that the price for a college degree is still increasing every year — faster than inflation — and that some people even claim college tuition is a bubble about to burst. They could be right, but I choose not to believe it.
Is knowledge an asset sold on the market that benefits only concentrated interests, or is it a gift for the whole of mankind? The Germans seem to favor the latter. Last weekend, for the first time ever, the Pirate Party of Germany won seats in the state government in Berlin. Founded by a group of computer programmers and scientists, the Pirates have not spent much time on foreign or economic policies, which are issues that people with enough power and money care more about. Instead, the Pirates campaign on Internet freedom, open source governance and civil liberties, particularly in education, copyright law and genetic patents. They just won 8.9 percent of the vote and now have 15 seats in the state parliament of Berlin.
The Pirate Party, just like the Green Party 30 years ago, attracts young voters with funny mottoes and campaign methods that other parties cannot even think of. They wear jeans and sneakers to official television debates and write slogans like "privatize religion" on campaign posters. While across the world, people are still forced to pay big bucks to the "evil intellectual monopoly" for their right to knowledge — or are refused the right to watch YouTube, communicate on Twitter or even log into their Gmail account — the Europeans enjoy greater civil rights and liberties.
I will not go so far as to suggest that we should all download free economics textbooks and Harry Potter movies from the Internet without feeling guilty. But there should be a balance between the right to knowledge and education and the protection of intellectual property. And by the way, Leibniz is greater than Stewart.
Jan Cao '13 is a comparative literature and German studies concentrator from Nanjing, China. She can be reached at jieran_cao@brown.edu.
