On the one hand, we have claims that K-12 textbooks are far too heavy, bulky, and wordy (though the debate rages on the best way to assuage the issue). On the other hand, college textbooks apparently have so much free real estate that advertisers are moving in:
The first thing Tamy Zubyk sees when she wakes up and peels the curtains back in her Ryerson University dormitory room is the sea of flashing, dazzling billboards that pepper Toronto's downtown skyline. From then on, the 21-year-old says she spends the rest of her day being targeted by ads in subways, on storefronts — even in the women's washrooms at Ryerson, which feature ads alongside hand dryers and on the inside of the toilet stall doors. The classroom is one of the few advertising-free zones for Zubyk and Canada's other 785,000 university and college students.Perhaps not for long.
For the past several months, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country's largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts.
The Gadfly's take: "Gadfly sees infinite potential in this innovation. A Big Mac next to Marx's Communist Manifesto could inform students of the ills of capitalism—think of the irony!"
My take - Wow, McGraw-Hill has developed a way to make college student ignore even more of the information in their textbooks.
Posted by kswygert at June 13, 2005 03:32 PM