Headlines from Inside Higher Education

Blackboard Move Galvanizes E-textbook Market  In a series of moves that could give a boost to an e-textbook industry that has been treading water for years, Blackboard has announced that it is partnering with a major publisher and two major e-textbook vendors to make it easy for professors and students to assign and access e-textbooks and other digital materials directly through its popular learning-management system. The company, which controlled about 60 percent of the learning-management market as of last year, said it is partnering with McGraw-Hill, a top academic publisher, as well as Follett Higher Education Group and Barnes & Noble, two major distributors that operate a combined 1,500 college bookstores in the United States and Canada.  Read More...

Trustees Vote to Skip Bond Issue, Despite Critical Need  Amid fears of a possible “double-dip” recession and simmering anti-tax sentiment, community colleges with pressing facilities needs are deciding they cannot risk a defeat in a bond vote – and so are not going before voters on this November’s ballot to ask for the funds to properly address them. For example, after months of testing the electoral waters, the Board of Trustees of the West Valley-Mission Community College District, located in California’s Silicon Valley, recently voted down a plan to put a referendum on the November ballot for a bond issue that could have been as large as $400 million. The trustees wholeheartedly agreed that the money was desperately needed to upgrade and replace aging buildings. But, as one trustee put it at the June meeting, “I don’t think the timing could be any worse.”  West Valley-Mission is hardly alone in failing to get a bond on this November’s ballot.  Read More...