Word: flat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bookstore is a college tradition that students can count on each semester. Textbook prices have risen steadily over the past two decades to the point where the average student now pays $900 a year, an expense that typically isn't covered by financial aid. But come September, publishing upstart Flat World Knowledge will offer a much more appealing price point: its books will be free...
...free. The firm, based in Nyack, N.Y., launched a pilot project Monday to supply four business and economics textbooks online at no charge to several hundred undergraduates on at least 15 campuses nationwide. By giving away content through the Web, Flat World aims to upend the $5.5 billion textbook industry. "Nobody's satisfied with the status quo. Students, faculty, authors - their feelings all range from ambivalent to extremely unhappy," says Flat World founder Eric Frank, a former executive at Prentice Hall, the nation's largest textbook publisher. "Why not try something different...
...Flat World's offerings won't differ much from a typical textbook in content. All have been authored by established academics and peer-reviewed before publication. It's the distribution method - via the Internet - that is a radical change. Video and audio clips are embedded in most texts, often adding timely examples from real-life practitioners. Plus, the texts are produced on an open-source platform, meaning they can be updated easily and professors can customize each textbook to match a particular lesson plan. Those are major advantages over paper editions, says Dana Lanham, an advertising professor at University...
...feel like outsiders. Most Africans and South Asians living in Hong Kong have their own horror stories of racism, from humiliating police searches on the street to being blocked from entering clubs and bars. It's not out of the ordinary for an Indian banker to be denied a flat for rent on the grounds that the landlord doesn't want his property to smell like curry. "This has been going on too long in a city with world-class aspirations," says David O'Rear, chief economist of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, which sat in during...
...crystal-blue eyes glancing anxiously toward a photographer's camera. The 20-year-old American exchange student with the Ivory-soap complexion was on her way to jail, charged in the murder of her British roommate, who was stabbed in the neck and bled to death in the flat they shared in the picturesque Umbrian capital...