Computer Blew

iClass

I will give Apple this much, it takes some serious brass ones to say “you know, with all those budget cuts you’re making, you should really set aside some cash to buy everyone an iPad.”  But that’s exactly what they did today with the announcement of iBooks 2 and accompaying textbook publishing deals.

I should also get a disclaimer out of the way.  I own an iPad 2 and use it primarily as a textbook.  I buy all my texts on Kindle or through online course reserve readings (typically much more cheaply than what I would pay for paper copies), and thanks to Dropbox, Simplenote and a few Office-editing programs, I’ve dramatically cut down the amount of stuff I have to lug around to class.  I’m able to do this because, like many other college/grad students I have a full time job that affords me a bit of disposable income to cover the upfront cost of the iPad. 

That much can’t be said for K-12 students, which seems to be the market Apple is going after here.  After all, the demo books they showed off (Dinosaurs, Biology, Algebra I) aren’t exactly Princeton material, and I have my doubts that the thing that’s been missing from education is embedded video, but more on that in a minute.

So why is Apple’s stab at textbooks, an industry which Jobs referred to in the Walter Isaacson biography as “ripe for digital destruction” DOA?  Where to begin…

From a financial standpoint it makes no sense for K-12 school districts to convert over to iBooks.  It’s unlikely that Apple would significantly reduce the price to purchase iPads, given the cost of the parts in an iPad 2 is estimated to be between $280 and $320 (according to iSuppli) and the iPad 1 still retails for between $350 and $400, refurbished.  But let’s say, for the sake of argument, Apple could cut some deal where school districts could make bulk purchases of iPads for $200 each.

For a single high school with 1,000 students (which is relatively small, by high school standards) that equals a $200,000 upfront cost to purchase iPads.  If 25 percent of students’ iPads  are returned to the school each year broken, damaged or otherwise unusable, that represents an annual cost expenditure of $50,000 just to replace equipment.  But you’ve also got to maintain all this equipment, so let’s say the school has to hire another IT person to come in and manage 1,000 iPads for an annual salary of $50,000.

For this price, you could hire two more teachers.  Two more teachers would bring the average class size at our theoretical high school from 40 students per class, down to 37.  This may not seem like a lot, but it’s that much more extra attention kids would get.

I suppose Apple could use the $76 billion in cash reserves it has to buy the approximately 50 million K-12 students a regular old unsubsidized iPad (which they could do, three times over), but this being Apple, I doubt they will.

Which brings me to another problem with iTextbooks and iPads for all.  The sad truth is we live in a country with a severely underfunded education system.  In most high schools, kids now have to pay out of pocket to play sports, play music or make art.  Textbooks aren’t purchased every year, they’re purchased every five or ten years.  On top of it all, hiring freezes, ballooning pension plans and a general unwillingness to fund education has resulted in crumbling school infrastructure and overcrowded classrooms.

To add insult to injury, this “textbook revolution” is out of reach of many students and is likely to remain that way.  I doubt the 31 million students in this country on free/subsidized school lunch programs will be able to afford the inevitable “iPad use fee” schools will likely charge to try to recoup some of the costs.

What is more likely to happen is that if iPads do find their way into classrooms, they will merely contribute to the digital divide currently growing between rich schools and poor schools.

I might be persuaded otherwise if Apple’s iPads-in-the-classroom vision were structured differently.  For instance, if the company had instead pushed the idea of each classroom having one computer for every three students, loaded with learning materials, internet access and MIT’s OpenCourseWare.  Or, better yet, if iBooks and iBooks Author used the DRM-free .epub standard instead of a proprietary format that can only be used on authorized Apple devices.  I could get behind that.

As someone who makes his living in the magazine and publishing industry, I can’t get behind the EULA uncovered in iBooks Author, which strips away the author’s right to sell their work anywhere but the iBooks store (where Apple conveniently takes their notorious 30 percent cut). But as appalling as I find it, that’s a rant for another day.

As it is, I have to take Apple’s announcement today at face value and assume that it’s simply an attempt to force students and educators to buy its devices and content.

I’m no fan of traditional textbooks, or paper books in general for that matter. But I also recognize that there’s no magic bullet for fixing the problems with education in this country. Will iPads help students learn better? Maybe. But good teachers, small classes, supporting parents and healthy kids definitely will.

I would rather my tax dollars funded those.