
Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill - axiom
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-15/top-hat-raises-22-5-million-to-go-after-pearson-mcgraw-hill
======
danielford
I teach biology at a community college and most of the services listed in that
article wouldn't improve my courses. I've already switched three of my four
courses over to open textbooks, which students can download for free or
purchase for the cost of printing. I use Openstax for these.

[https://openstax.org/subjects](https://openstax.org/subjects)

For the online learning software, I've also dumped the publisher products and
switched to the free spaced-repetition software Memrise.

I think most of my colleagues will be moved over to open educational resources
within fifteen years, and I'm not sure there's long-term profit to be made in
this market.

~~~
cpursley
Check out
[https://cogenteducation.com/products](https://cogenteducation.com/products)
when you have a chance. We make interactive case studies for biology that go
much further than any textbook, digital or otherwise.

We have a free trial:
[https://cogenteducation.com/trial](https://cogenteducation.com/trial)

 _full disclosure: I 'm a developer there_

~~~
prdonahue
> I think most of my colleagues will be moved over to open educational
> resources within fifteen years, and I'm not sure there's long-term profit to
> be made in this market.

Sounds like he's looking for a free solution, not trialware.

~~~
javajosh
"Interactive case studies" is a value-add that might be worth paying for.

~~~
gravypod
What will you be paying with after your 5 to 30k/year tuition? You can't bleed
a stone.

~~~
cpursley
I agree. It's rare for a teacher to pay for our cases out of their own pocket;
it's generally the school system who purchases a package out of their yearly
budget.

------
mralvar
I absolutely hated Top Hat during my undergrad. It was just another thing I
had to buy that teachers used as an excuse to be lazy because it was
~interactive~. You were so tied to a device for all your classes that if
multiple teachers used it it wound up becoming a pain.

I noticed it was mostly instructors who taught one-off elective/strictly
credit classes that used it in almost a punitive way to make sure you paid
attention to them.

edit - another ironic thing regarding the title of the article, is that the
instructors would upload the Pearson, McGraw, etc provided slides with the
textbook to tophat.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Do you really expect an underpaid adjunct _not_ to outsource the grading to
the department's textbook company of choice? Adjuncts don't get to pick
textbooks.

But what's with the griping about textbook publishers? The overreliance on
adjuncts allows the university to charge lower tuition and the publishers make
the feat possible!

~~~
mralvar
So the cost should be pushed onto me instead? I understand the struggles of
adjuncts and grad-students as they were most of my friends in Undergrad
because I came into school older. But not one of them used Top Hat or a clone
equivalent.

~~~
HarryHirsch
The cost will continue to be passed on to you until there is a robust
discussion about the financing model and the working conditions in academia.
If any change is going to happen it's going to come through student effort;
despite their protestations the position of the unions and the professors is
to preserve the _status quo_. Back then we'd call this "revolutionary
consciousness".

The goals of the students will also need to be taken into account. A colleague
gave up giving detailed comments on the lab protocols he graded, the only
thing the students were interested in was the grade. My experience matches.
It's understandable, at our institution students mostly plump for medical
school or associated profession, and it's the grade that counts, not the
subject knowledge. The GPA really haunts you.

~~~
rhizome
I'm sorry you're so jaded, but how is textbook/online pricing not relevant to
the financing model? There's no need to dismiss that avenue of conversation.

------
mabbo
As a developer in the Toronto area, I suspect I would be working for Top Hat
if their recruiters were better. I've had two or three interactions with them
and each time they completely dropped the ball.

Extra funding is great, but if they can't hire, they can't use it.

~~~
libovness
what are some of the other more interesting companies/startups in Toronto?

~~~
throwawayosiu1
Shopify seems interesting.

There really are not that many tech companies in Toronto (and that are hiring
unless you have 5+ yrs of experience).

Either 1. you have very very early stage startups (that expect you to work for
free till they get funded),

2\. funded startups that have a short runaway and expect you to work like
crazy till they get to the next round of funding (during an interview with a
fintech startup - it was mentioned that they expected me to work for ~12+ hrs
/ day but I'd still get paid for only 8 hrs. But when they scaled up, I'd be
"rewarded" for my hustle, grit and commitment".

3\. Big companies (Google, Mozilla, etc.) who are looking for quite a lot of
devs but seem to be insanely picky about hiring them.

To add to this, there seem to be a lot of devs than jobs (or that companies
can go for long without hiring for those open roles).

~~~
sobes
As someone who's worked as a Software Developer in Toronto for the past 13+
years, I totally disagree with this assessment.

First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free
until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid
intern that never touches code.

Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than the
ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while paying
you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations especially
since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada (describing such a work
situation to friends will raise eyebrows -- definitely not the standard
practice, whatever industry you work at).

Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be
insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.

All of the above are from personal first hand experience. Of course I haven't
worked for every single tech company in Toronto but I have worked for several
(mainly early stage startups).

~~~
throwawayosiu1
> First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free
> until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid
> intern that never touches code.

Obviously this is not something I have a lot of statistically accurate data
for but, me and my friends are recent graduates and collectively have applied
to quite a lot of very early stage startups in Toronto and out of those, we
all have experienced the bait and switch of unpaid work till funding at least
50% of the time.

> Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than
> the ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while
> paying you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations
> especially since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada
> (describing such a work situation to friends will raise eyebrows --
> definitely not the standard practice, whatever industry you work at).

I didn't say all startups are like what I've mentioned. The one I'm currently
working at is awesome! That said, it's more often the case that startups use
their short runaway as an excuse to make you work long hours (and just to be
clear - the 12hr / day was not an estimation - I was literally asked my
thoughts about it during an interview - that company is still recruiting on HN
Who's hiring for more employees and a quick google search shows they have
increased headcount to 35 people this year and is profitable).

> Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be
> insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.

I have 0 problems with employers being picky. I worked closely with the CEO of
a previous startup and I totally understand that. What I don't understand is
the point of claiming you need to hire a developer (with a start date of
immediately) and then leaving the position open for months altogether, or
having crappy working conditions.

BTW I've interviewed at Nulogy (if that's where you are currently working) -
Since this is a throwaway I can't give too much details, While I was still
disappointed for the reason I was rejected it was one of the good interviews
I've had (interviewer was knowledgeable, I learnt about the company and
product, the tech stack, the problems they were facing, what was expected of
me, and just some personal chit-chat during the coffee walk).

------
spandrew
I've worked at Top Hat for the last couple years (on the engineering floor)
and it's been nothing but positive. Out of all the Toronto-area startups I've
worked at in the last 6 or so years Top Hat seemed the most serious about
succeeding. And I love the product-space – one I can potentially actually make
a difference in. The hiring process was tough, but I didn't think it was
unfair.

I worked previously at accounting and marketing experience startups in the
area, too. Their products always seemed awkwardly positioned — not silly
enough to be fun like Snapchat or solving a serious enough need to be Shopify.

Anyway take that for what you will. Just my 2 cents and thoughts (admittedly
biased) on working here the last couple years. They've been some of the most
productive ones of my career so far.

------
georgee
I am the VP Engineering at Top Hat. Our biggest goal is to create an
environment where talented people love coming in to work every day and enjoy
being a part of something great! I think disrupting one of the last old media
holdouts is more than a worthy goal.

In the past couple of years we’ve grown our company from under 100 employees
to well over 200. All this growth meant rapid, challenging role changes and
adaptation and we've had some rough patches. Over the past 18 months, we've
had a very low attrition rate in Engineering and I think it reflects the
positive experience of the vast majority of our team.

I am sorry some people have had a bad experience interacting with us. I would
love to hear any complaints or suggestions, my email is george at tophat dot
com

------
wbh1
Disclosure: I work for a large University (combined residential+online
presence of ~100k) and we have contracts with Pearson, McGraw, Cengage, and
Top Hat.

Top Hat has been surprisingly enjoyable to work with from a contractual side.
They've been accommodating to our needs and worked with us to improve their
product -- I'm actually working on a SOW with them right now where they'll be
adding new features for us at 0 cost.

Even though we have strategic partnerships with these large publishers, I
wouldn't mind seeing them go by the wayside in favor of integrating more of
Top Hat's digital content.

~~~
throwawaydbdksn
Does it bother you that the majority of student see mandatory subscriptions to
all of these services as a giant ripoff?

I mean, you could save every student maybe 600 a year if the university
purposely used books that are one edition out of date. That's the same as
lowering tuition around 5% at most places. Would this really affect the
quality of education in any meaningful way?

"Strategic partnership" sounds like another way of saying the university gets
some money out of the deal at the expense of their students pocket books.

How is this justified from the position of someone who maintains relationships
with these companies?

~~~
wbh1
I'm not involved in the curriculum development side of things, so I don't have
much input into that. And prior to the implementation of Top Hat, our students
had all been using physical "clickers" to respond to in-class questions.

However, Top Hat implemented a program where the students could trade in their
old clicker and get a 5 year Top Hat subscription. Plus a "Lifetime" Top Hat
subscription is cheaper than buying a clicker, so students have seen it as a
net win.

We do not receive financial compensation from Cengage, Pearson, or McGraw. The
strategic part is that they offer more services to us, let us test new stuff
they're toying with, and help our profs develop custom content.

I still take classes, so I definitely feel the hit of these textbook prices.
It's also why I've advocated for pushing more towards a "direct integration"
method of provide course content in our LMS. Students pay ~$60 for access to
the content, instead of $100+ for a textbook. It still adds up, but it's a way
to start to lower costs.

(and the prices keep going down. I just found out yesterday that one of our
vendors is dropping the price of a range of course content because of high
adoption rate)

~~~
cycomachead
The problem with these lifetime subscriptions is that you never know if you're
going to actually use them. Textbook prices are definitely a problem, but it's
usually much easier to rent or resell textbooks than the equivalent of
software.

You also don't buy textbooks until you actually need them. I know many
students who have felt pressured into "saving money" on "all 4 years!" plans
only to find they don't need a product most terms or they stay and extra
semester/term/year and need to spend even more than they were planning.

------
kerhackernews
Well if they can get rid of the $200+ textbooks that you have to buy (and
never use) to get web access that would be great. Almost all material in
school textbooks can be found online for free, it really makes no sense to
require students to spend anything of $20 on coursebooks.

~~~
neap24
I agree that access to information online has lowered the price that people
are willing to pay for textbooks (digital or physical). But I still think
there's a market for a textbook that essentially organizes all the relevant
information for a course and vets it for correctness. This is worth a little
more than $20 to me, but definitely not $200.

------
jsonne
It's ambitious and I wish them the best of luck. However, as someone who has
worked in the space, they're going to run into a very real problem that the
textbook industrial complex maintains its stranglehold because of the very
real financial incentives it gives professors etc. Add that in with the fact
that content isn't all that expensive to create in the first place, getting
students to adopt is expensive, and it's a very noisy marketplace, they're
going to have an uphill battle.

------
uiri
Having used TopHat in a couple classes circa 2014-2015, the product is pretty
bad. It's main use case is, honestly, attendance. Two anecdotes stick out.

The university subsidizes the cost down to $5. Through some technical error,
TopHat applied a full discount. One month later, they noticed their mistake
and retroactively charged each student $5. I think I'm the only one who
complained to their support enough to get it for free; a lawyer's time isn't
worth it and I'm sure they spent more than $5 of support personnel time on it.
Charging software engineering students like this is a great way to poison the
well for recruitment efforts down the road.

The second anecdote is a guest lecturer, who apparently had questions already
set up in the system, was completely and utterly unable to figure out the UI.
He abandoned TopHat entirely in favour of a show of hands.

~~~
axiom
You're right that there are still too many profs who use Top Hat for really
basic stuff like polls in class and taking attendance - thankfully that's in
the minority these days.

Our goal is to get profs to at least take these baby steps to get started and
then to swap out their $200 textbook with content on our platform, which would
save students a ton of money and create a much better experience in the
process.

Here are some representative examples of content that's on the platform:

[https://tophat.com/marketplace/openstax/concepts-
biology/](https://tophat.com/marketplace/openstax/concepts-biology/)

[https://tophat.com/marketplace/english-
composition-i/](https://tophat.com/marketplace/english-composition-i/)

[https://tophat.com/marketplace/publicspeaking/](https://tophat.com/marketplace/publicspeaking/)

[https://tophat.com/marketplace/generalchemistry/](https://tophat.com/marketplace/generalchemistry/)

~~~
coldpie
>
> [https://tophat.com/marketplace/generalchemistry/](https://tophat.com/marketplace/generalchemistry/)

$60 plus a "subscription," whatever that is.

I can't speak for the quality of the books, but searching "general chemistry"
on half.com gives me a bunch of entries in the $5-30 range. They're a few
years old, but I can't imagine general chemistry has had many radical changes
in the past decade.

These textbooks work with Linux or any other operating system. They can be re-
sold, probably for the same price at which they were purchased. There is no
learning curve to using a textbook. The textbook's servers will never be down.
The university has to pay no licensing fee to the textbook. Textbooks do not
have technical glitches. I can read a textbook on the bus, on a plane, in a
car, or anywhere, with no worries about running out of batteries or losing my
network connection.

Why on Earth would I ever pay more than twice the price for a far worse user
experience?

------
swiley
I didn't like tophat because it brought computers into the classroom where
they don't belong.

But anything that attacks person is honestly probably a good thing, they seem
to be actively hostile to students.

------
erikpukinskis
A marketplace where teachers can sell educational content directly to
students, so.... The internet?

But with... an entrance fee? The gorilla which eats all schools will have an
entrance fee?

------
itchyjunk
<rant> I hate Pearons' My Lab & Mastering products. It was a nightmare using
the mastering chemistry and having a similar experience with Physics
currently. I felt that $80 for just the software is over priced because they
want you pay another $50 for the e-coursebook.

It's not that horrible of a software on itself but for that price, i think
it's bad. It takes a lot of effort to put in the symbols and stuff, its very
picky about answer format ( 1/2 != 2/4 for example and if its expecting .5
then .5 != 1/2). The professor can add their own content and sometime when my
physics professor does it, it's really hard to figure out what the software
wants. My calculus class is using "MyOpenMath" which is so much better as a
software itself. On top of that it's free. And has a free text book associated
with it and my professor decided to use that whole combo, so its great.

I wasn't happy with a software called "TestOut" used for my computer class
either but at least it was cheap ($40) compared to Pearson. Maybe I am just
poor but price is a big factor for me in these mandatory software the college
makes me buy for every other class. I want something that enhances my learning
experience, not one that hinders it. Especially when I am wasting good money
on education. ^_^ </rant>

~~~
axiom
Our goal is to put an end to that kind of crap, where publishers charge
$100-300 for a text and then gouge students another $50 on top of that for a
homework system.

Most content on Top Hat is free or around the $20-40 price range, with most of
the money going back to the author (vs. publisher model of paying a 5-10%
royalty)

~~~
throwawaydbdksn
Do the professors get paid to use tophat? If so I will avoid them at any cost.
What a perverse incentive to take money from students and put it directly into
the professors wallet

~~~
ronparkins
nope...

------
markrusciano
I used Top Hat last semester at Iowa State University and the mobile app was
excellent. Unfortunately, many of our projectors' are still 1280x1024 which
resulted in some of the UI and text of the professor's web-app being cut off.

Still worlds better than anything else I've used and very moderately priced.

------
RaiO
I work at Top Hat in the Engineering Department but only joined in the past
year. I have heard second hand that things were bad in the past (2+ years ago
now) in terms of culture and work/life balance.

Things have been great since I've joined and the exec team is VERY interested
in what they can do to make things even better.

Here are a few of my personal observations, both good and bad: \- people most
often work 10-6 with flexibility and everyone actually uses their vacation and
"personal days" \- most devs actually break from work at lunch (supplied) to
socialize and play board games \- you get great visibility into how the
company is doing and what other departments are up to \- considering we are a
company of 200+ people the execs are very accessible and are happy to spend
time with you for any questions/concerns you have \- all work is extremely
team oriented. They care about where people want to go in their careers and
several people have been progressively given more senior responsibilities. \-
the majority (not everyone) is very engaged and excited to be here. \- the
handful of people who have left in the past couple years all left on good
terms and regularly stay in touch and even come out to Engineering events
still. There's definitely a sense of community (although I believe this didn't
always exist and will be a challenge to keep around as we grow aggressively).
\- great location (for me) right on the subway downtown Toronto

Bad things: \- space is cramped. You get a decent sized standing desk but
there's not a lot of breathing room other than that. They've outgrown the
space though there are plans in the works to fix this. \- there is time
allocated for "Engineering" projects but mostly we are very date driven and
have an aggressive product delivery schedule. \- diversity. It's a top
management priority for the next year but historically they've clearly dropped
the ball here. There are several people in Engineering very interested in
improving diversity.

I am clearly a biased party, actively working here, but I genuinely feel it's
a great place build your career. There are very few places this size that are
growing ~70-80% YoY continuously, actually making profit, and have great
ambitions for the future.

~~~
wbh1
The accessibility to executives is something I've noticed even just working on
contracts with Top Hat. I am surprised at the level of engagement that your
VPs and C-suite execs have with customers. It certainly makes customers feel
cared for.

------
educanon
I'm not sure I understand why coursera and edX are not discussed in this
space; as someone who works with higher ed institutions, I see these platforms
often adopted to replace traditional publishers.

~~~
cat199
OpenStax as well.. All great initiatives.

As for the article, I'd assume it is because it is Bloomberg, and so, these
things being more nonprofit/altruistically driven, will never be as 'sexy' as
a 'market disrupting' company set up to shake things up and create more
'value'..

------
PublicFace
PDFs are free and all students already know this. The only people who care are
the people with a vested interest in selling pointless and useless
garbage(textbooks). I didn't pay for my textbooks in school. Nobody should. If
it's useful you should copy it and share it with your friends. Software,
textbooks, tools, designs, ideas, whatever. Information is free whether you
believe it or not. The medium is what you should pay for....but it is not the
message.

------
umutisik
quote from email:

I know you recently saw a demo of Top Hat in action, and I want to personally
make sure you are aware of a brand new promotion we're running!

To further enhance your lecture experience, we are now providing iPad Airs to
professors using Top Hat with a total of 75 students or more this upcoming
Spring or Summer term.

If this sounds like it's up your alley, simply click the button below!

Happy teaching,

------
JabavuAdams
I previously worked with their VP Engineering, at Janna Systems. A very, very
sharp guy who's been through a couple of startups and exits.

I've heard from a different friend that they're very results oriented w.r.t
estimates, etc. It means that they get a lot of stuff done, but there's no
time for research or non-approved exploration.

~~~
omouse
That makes it sound like a ticket-shop; you're treated like a bricklayer
rather than a software engineer?

~~~
georgee
Thanks for the vote of confidence! Like a broadway show, the start of classes
is fixed in stone so meeting dates is pretty important to the business.

Good development organizations tailor their methodology to the needs of the
business and here at Top Hat the whole company rallies behind the start of
classes.

Having a process to meet a date doesn't preclude good engineering. No software
engineer wants to be told what to do and how to do it. As a business we are
very transparent as to what we want to accomplish and my engineering teams
have a lot of leeway on how they want to accomplish it.

------
clavalle
They need to publish traditional textbooks as well if they are going to
compete. Maybe with images and QR codes for the parts where video adds
something to the text.

If they don't then they will be Just Another Multimedia Learning Company.

~~~
kerhackernews
It would be neat if they offered some free textbooks and course materials for
certain subjects.

~~~
axiom
We totally do offer that! :)

------
throwawayosiu1
Something that annoys me the most about top hat is not the product but the
company:

1\. almost every month they enter their info for the HN Who's Hiring thread.

2\. BUT they don't seem to ever respond apart from something automated about
receiving your resume (this is not just from personal experience, I've seen
people generally comment about the no real response)

3\. They advertise the same position over and over again (mobile developer,
backend/frontend/fullstack dev)

and finally to top it all of, I don't think they really care about being
called out on this at all.

~~~
ghettoCoder
What's not to get. They're just casting a wide net looking for that special
unicorn coder that only appears when the planets align. All other mere mortals
are not worthy but they will gladly waste your time until then. I guess they
forgot the old adage about interviews are 2 way streets.

These guys don't have a very good rep in Ottawa either. It's not really their
fault, it's more of a Canadian business attitude thing.

~~~
koolba
> These guys don't have a very good rep in Ottawa either. It's not really
> their fault, it's more of a Canadian business attitude thing.

What does " _Canadian business attitude_ " mean?

Are you referring to attitude of Canadians toward businesses or their attitude
as a Canadian corporation?

~~~
ghettoCoder
The latter. There's a belief that the "labour" should be grateful to the
"owner" for a job instead of a looking at it as a straight business exchange
of labour for dollars. It runs pretty deep in medium to large businesses and
sadly many people tolerate that sort of treatment.

Probably a by-product of our colonial days that we've yet to cast off.
Although immigration will solve it soon enough.

~~~
throwawayosiu1
A lot of Canadians have this attitude too.

A very close friend of mine works for OPG (via a contractor).

OPG and his contractor both have agreed to give him 2 weeks paid time off, and
~ 1 week of sick time off.

However, taking time off ensures that you WILL get laid off (reasons would be
made up ofc) during the next quarter.

This basically forces everyone to not take time off (and work during vacations
- my friend worked full time during statutory holidays like Christmas and New
Year).

When I tried to tell him this was very illegal, he basically said that he was
lucky to have his job or he'd be unemployed so he does not mind this.

Now this might be an exception but I've heard and seen numerious stories such
as these all over Ontario from various companies (from crappy ones like TCS to
startups to small established business like Axiom and even some big multi-
national companies - especially in the fintech world and banks).

That said, there are also a lot of companies (like the one I currently work
for and the previous company I worked at) that try their best to make sure
employees have a great time working there and do their best to achieve that.

~~~
koolba
> OPG and his contractor both have agreed to give him 2 weeks paid time off,
> and ~ 1 week of sick time off.

> However, taking time off ensures that you WILL get laid off (reasons would
> be made up ofc) during the next quarter.

That's pretty bad though I wonder if it's actually illegal. In the USA most
employment is "at will" so companies can fire you for anything or nothing. I'm
not sure where taking vacation/sick days counts from a labor law perspective
but I wouldn't be surprised if it was within the rights of the company to fire
employees who use them.

> This basically forces everyone to not take time off (and work during
> vacations - my friend worked full time during statutory holidays like
> Christmas and New Year).

You see this a lot in the finance world as well. Nobody takes vacation during
the year and piles it on at the end of the year when things are "change
freezese". It's pretty silly.

> Now this might be an exception but I've heard and seen numerious stories
> such as these all over Ontario from various companies (from crappy ones like
> TCS to startups to small established business like Axiom and even some big
> multi-national companies - especially in the fintech world and banks).

> That said, there are also a lot of companies (like the one I currently work
> for and the previous company I worked at) that try their best to make sure
> employees have a great time working there and do their best to achieve that.

So how rampant is this though? If it's prevalent throughout Canada then it
sounds like a symptom of a jobs gap. If most employers can be picky about
picking employees who will skip vacations (again ignoring how stupid this
sounds), then I'd argue there aren't many choices for employees to begin with.

~~~
throwawayosiu1
> That's pretty bad though I wonder if it's actually illegal. In the USA most
> employment is "at will" so companies can fire you for anything or nothing.
> I'm not sure where taking vacation/sick days counts from a labor law
> perspective but I wouldn't be surprised if it was within the rights of the
> company to fire employees who use them.

It might be illegal in Canada (not 100% sure) but a group of ex-employees that
have been fired are suing the company.

> You see this a lot in the finance world as well. Nobody takes vacation
> during the year and piles it on at the end of the year when things are
> "change freezese". It's pretty silly.

This would still be understandable (as you'd expect people to take vacations
at year end) - However he was indirectly told to forfeit his vacation
completely (which in my opinion is scummy if not illegal).

> So how rampant is this though? If it's prevalent throughout Canada then it
> sounds like a symptom of a jobs gap. If most employers can be picky about
> picking employees who will skip vacations (again ignoring how stupid this
> sounds), then I'd argue there aren't many choices for employees to begin
> with.

I've personally seen it happen in Ontario (don't know if it happens in other
provinces) but I don't think it's any different in other provinces either. In
my opinion, it's a combination of:

1\. fewer jobs

2\. employers willing to sit tight till they get their "right" and submissive
employee (because you can see thousands of job openings every single day and
take it from me - I've applied to 100s of them but I have a feeling they are
just fake - as in, companies post them to show growth/scale etc. but don't
really hire - for example, Index Exchange and IBM both have a few positions
open for which a friend got interviewed and passed on as he was not a culture
fit - 10 months later....still unfilled)

3\. most employees don't mind it in the slightest - or those who do, have
already done what's necessary and move into better positions (or I'm hanging
out with some some weird folks).

I've seen very few people who are really passionate about their job / stuff
they build / improving etc. - for most, it's all about making enough $, and
having enough to sustain your daily life PERIOD (and the cycle continues). You
are considered crazy if you try to break this or don't like this routine.

------
woodruffw
Thanks to the addition of Top Hat by my statistics professor, I'm now
registered on _at least_ six functionally similar/equivalent services this
semester:

\- Top Hat

\- GradeScope

\- Canvas (UMD rebranded it to "ELMS")

\- WebAssign

\- Piazza

\- The CS department's internal grading/recordkeeping system

I understand the need for competition, and I think that shaking Pearson and
McGraw-Hill from their dominant positions is good.

However, I am measurably _less_ productive in the class that requires me to
use three of these than the ones that have little-to-no online interaction -
devices in lecture are a distraction, automatically graded homework is a
frustratingly fuzzy experience, and paying $50+ to multiple third parties to
subsidize the workload heaped on my professor by the school feels exploitative
all-around.

------
senior_james
I think it's great that they are trying to disrupt the textbook industry.
However, the industry is so large and the majority of US universities are so
entrenched, it's going to be an uphill battle.

There have been many startups that attempted this and all have failed (or the
VCs just wanted a payout and were bought for millions when the big publishing
companies felt threatened).

It's like trying to disrupt Ticketmaster. You might be able to get a few
venues over to your side, but if the artists aren't switching over, you won't
get very much traction.

Universities also have no incentive to save money on software. They know that
not only is there more of a demand to go to college than the supply of
colleges, but that they are guaranteed tuition through the federal loans
program.

If we had no federal student loan program, they would be forced to compete on
the free market and all of these ridiculous prices for textbooks and software
would free fall.

~~~
jabl
I do think the textbook industry is ready for disruption, but it won't happen
by someone VC funded that essentially just wants the money going to the
incumbents to themselves.

The disruption I'm expecting to happen is quality CC licensed content. Well,
depending on the topic that already exists, but what needs to happen I guess
is mainstream mindshare.

A _lot_ of the $$$ in the textbook industry is just air ("Hey, basic math
hasn't changed in 100 years and we haven't figured out a better way to tell
the story, but anyway lets add a few fluff paragraphs and reshuffle all the
exercises so students are forced to buy the new edition").

But TBH, at my university the teaching staff largely disliked the textbook
racket too, and came up with their own exercises, thus allowing students to
use any edition of the chosen textbook.

That being said, I'm just appalled at the poor quality of many of the
textbooks from the major publishers. It's like they're selling by the pound,
and thus end up with phonebook sized monsters that spend an amazing amount of
pages explaining very little.

~~~
throwaway729
_> The disruption I'm expecting to happen is quality CC licensed content_

Bingo! But there is still money to be made here.

Bundle a high quality open source textbook with tons of extra examples, auto-
graded quizzes/assignments when possible, cheater detection, etc.

Provide regular updates so that Google doesn't know the answers to all the
homework assignments/quizzes. Scrape the answers that are provided by google
and incorporate them into the cheater detection.

Also provide a bit of analytics on top of the quiz/homework infrastructure. Or
at least provide robust excel export so that instructors can figure out if
there are clusters of students struggling with this or that concept.

And then sell the bundle and give some kick-back to the author(s) of the open
source text (because it's the right thing to do, but also because the authors
are thought leaders and will plug your product if they feel you're providing a
valuable product at a reasonable price without screwing anyone).

Trying to write better textbooks than seasoned and altruistic professors is a
losing battle.

~~~
funkymike
One important service that the existing textbook companies provide is editing.
That's the gap that seems to be unaddressed by having professors self publish.

~~~
throwaway729
I don't agree.

Editing for content or style?

Style editing is usually detrimental IME. Especially when the style editor
doesn't understand the content and is just applying typographical rules.

And content editing is usually done by fellow professors or students. Which if
the book is open source will happen anyways as new professors use the book in
their courses and notice errors.

~~~
cycomachead
Publishers provide style, content/grammatical editing, domain experience and
pedagogical review.

Most professors don't have strong backgrounds in pedagogy and even those that
do benefit from having others edit their work.

------
bfirsh
This story has a bunch of internal hyperlinks, but none pointing at the actual
product. To save a Google: [https://tophat.com](https://tophat.com)

An aside: why is news on the web still so bad at this? Presumably because
sites are incentivised to not let people leave through an external link? Is
there a way to incentivise better linking?

~~~
619deathstar
Opening links in a new tab with the target="_blank" attribute in your <a> html
tag? Keeps the user on the main site in a different tab, and when they close
out the new tabs page, they are kicked back into the original site.

~~~
mcbits
Warning: Always add rel="noopener noreferrer" if you use target="_blank".
Otherwise the target site could redirect the main site to a phishing page or
worse.

------
maverick_iceman
_> In November, they launched an online content marketplace, where professors
can create course materials and sell it around the world._

Professors already post a lot of study materials for free on their websites.
However, that hasn't replaced traditional textbooks. Why this should be any
different? Also given all that free course materials why would someone pay for
additional materials?

~~~
jimhefferon
I don't know anything about TopHat.

But I'm a professor and I've offered material for free for twenty years. I can
think of some very good reasons to prefer this marketplace-thingy from an
author's perspective.

1) Exposure. If you want to sell you want to be on the shelves at the local
mart.

(And some authors don't want to support the download traffic.)

2) Platform. If what you are offering is guaranteed to work because you
produced it according to this vendor's standards then you don't have to field
queries about platforms you don't understand. (I offer a straight PDF of a
math text. The only twist is that if you click on the question it bounces you
to the answer and if you click on the answer it bounces you to the question. I
get queries about that.)

In particular, I'm concerned about standards for interactivity. I don't want
to code that stuff, I want to write a text. If a vendor provides the widgets
and takes a cut of sales, for instance, I'd read their pitch further.

3) Integration. If it all works with some online gradebook that'd be great.

4) Version control. When version 3 comes out, you'd like version 2 to go away.

~~~
maverick_iceman
Thank you for the response. I understand why authors might find this
beneficial but do you think it can outweigh the advantage of being free?

~~~
jimhefferon
I offer a text, _Linear Algebra_ , both for Free download and for sale (at
Amazon $22). It generates a respectable number of sales. People will pay, or
at least some people will pay, for quality. They do get mad, though, at paying
hundreds.

I am not a business person but I can imagine a scenario where schools purchase
a block of the materials for classes. Say, a prof wants to use a Graph Theory
document. Their bookstore pays $13 each for the materials, and a bill for that
appears on the student's college charge. Seems possible to me. And beyond that
individuals could buy one at a time, of course.

------
brilliantcode
Does an open source version of Top Hat exists? I think a lot of educational
institutions might be interested in a cheaper and more flexible open source
alternatives.

