Maybe so, but I shudder at how much money I’ve wasted on books that were never used, and those books that were overpriced because I couldn’t get them elsewhere in time. Or the books I had to pay a premium for because the bookstore shorted the order and didn’t get enough for everyone taking the course, so I had to pay whatever the seller wanted, plus expedited shipping.
Besides, tuition is payable in the future. Textbook money is more immediate.
Robin
There’s a better reason for it: the economics of textbooks are completely out of whack. Professors make the purchasing decisions, but students are the ones who actually have to pay for the texts. The people making the purchasing decisions have little to no reason to factor price into their decisions. This means that the publishers don’t have to compete on price.
There are other problems. The ridiculous rate at which new editions come out with no new value, as you mentioned. Professors who require you to buy their own substandard texts(I own a text with entire chapters missing and labelled “To Be Completed”) is another.
What really proved to me that the whole system is corrupt, though, is something that just happened in a course I took last summer. There’s a standard algorithms text called Introduction to Algorithms(but usually abbreviated CLRS, for the names of the four authors). It’s considered by many to be one of the best textbooks on algorithms out there. For the longest time, it was the text for 3rd year algorithms at my university. When I was in 2nd year, the professors teaching the 2nd year algorithms course had the bright idea to also use CLRS as the text for their class to save us some money in the future. Then I hit 3rd year algorithms, and all of a sudden, they decided to change the text for the 3rd year class. To a textbook that was, by the admission of our instructor, not as good as CLRS. :dubious:
This is what happens when too many professors “require” textbooks that their students will never end up reading. I have an economics text still in its original wrapping.
$600, approximately.
No, I’m not kidding.
I bike commute when the weather is nice so I have permission (I asked nicely) to use a locker at the pool locker room so I can shower before class. My school also has lockers for rent in the library for $5 a semester.
Most of my textbooks are published by the school itself. I’m in law school, and the school collates and republishes, often with the instructor’s commentary included, cases that we are to study. So we will use them and discuss their contents, generally in every class. They are expensive though, and can cost between $50 to $90 each. At least the amount of use makes you feel as if you’re getting your money’s worth.
I should note though that the books we needed for first year were commercially-published books. These were definitely expensive; I seem to recall that my first year books cost about $1200.
Now, one good thing that my faculty does do is they’re moving more and more to printed course notes. They’re written by the professors themselves, so all of the material is relevent. They’re a lot cheaper as well – usually less than $20 CND, instead of $80+ CND for a full textbook. The notes are usually way more useful, as well. They often contain the slides that the professors are lecturing from, which makes note taking so much easier.
Another UW-P grad just checking in to say that it must suck to pay that much for books.
-D&R
I actually try to help my students out by not ordering any textbooks, and having the material available on-line.
I know this will be hard to believe but with the materials available on-line, cost $0, I still got complaints when I expected the students to printout their “texts” and have them available in-class. Why? Lots of reasons, none of which I felt my cockles warming to:
“I forgot”
“My printer ran out of paper”
“I can’t afford a printer, and there was a long line in the computer lab this morning”
“Blackboard [our on-line provider] was down when I tried accessing it.”
“My dog peed on it”
You name it. Sometimes, I just think that students like to have something to complain about.
Unlike any other portion of humanity.
Lit classes rock. I have 3 classes and spent around 130 dollars total on the books I need. (Of course, profs also assign a lot of supplementary reading that we have to print out, so that usually adds up to around 10 dollars a week.)
I spent more money in undergrad, when they made us buy those huge-ass anthologies that cost 50 dollars each back in Korea. Still, I never spent as much money as my friends in engineering or biology. Must count small blessings.
It’s been a…{ahem}…long time since I was in college, but I’m surprised to hear that they are still using books! Physical, tree-destroying paper books?! Are computers obsolete? You could put the entire texts with pictures and supplementary material for a major on a CD for a few pennies, add the author’s generous royalties, and still sell it for $10/per semester. You could carry an entire 4 years’ worth of material on a single DVD. Not to mention the ability to extract text and images, search, imbedded links, weight and space saving, ease of revisions, etc. that are un-possible with printed books.
Books? You got to be kidding! We thought those would be obsolete way before now! Say it ain’t so, Joe!