alt Hacker News> Ok, a publisher stakes their reputation on having reliable problem sets.
Who gives a damn about publishers?
They introduce artificial distribution costs; They are not capable of or refuse to fact-check; the copy-editing they provide is well within the capabilities of ai; at best they introduce asset-providers (eg illustrators) to writers.
> Switching the problem sets every couple years is a difficult task in and of itself
Who cares? The western academic system is already laughably bad at weeding out the incapable. Just let people cheat. It's not like people aren't cheating already.
When I went to college, two of the calc professors were married. They co-authored the calc book… for calc 1, 2, and 3. Did not matter which class you were taking, (1,2, or 3) one was required to buy the whole book.
They changed the problem sets once a year. So at minimum you were basically obligated to buy the book twice, if not 3 times.