I managed to get through undergrad and graduate school and only bought maybe 20% of books that were listed as required. Usually there are altnerate ways of getting the same or the book isn’t as required as indicated.
And of the 20% I did buy, I probably never opened 50% of those.
We know you’re just trying to be nice to your students, but this is copyright violation. You’re stealing from the writers and publishers of the textbooks in question. I don’t know what the answer to the problem is, but I’m sure theft isn’t it.
I’m at over $450 so far and the bookstore is out of a couple books I need. Most ridiculous? The 2 credit “Perespectives” course I have to take one frickin’ day a week has a textbook that costs $95.
Actually, this depends on how much of the textbook is being copied and distributed. Fair use allows a certain amount of a book to be copied for educational and research purposes.
I know that my university library will scan chapters from books and put them on the web in .pdf form so that students can download them. Being a library, they are very careful about staying within fair use restrictions. When i was having some stuff scanned for a course i was helping to teach, the librarian in charge told me that each request for such a service was evaluated by looking at what percentage of the book was being copied. She said that, as a rough guide, they could normally scan up to about 10 percent of a book for reproduction on the web.
And that’s just one class!!! It’s taught by a visiting prof and let’s just say this has failed to make a good first impression on me. Thank god I’m only taking one of the two grad-level courses he’s teaching, the other one has 15 books nad is probably between $300-400.
I hate fall semester, I haven’t gotten paid since April and won’t again until the end of September, my summer job doesn’t fully cover my essential expenses so I’m already dipping into savings and then POW! $500 for one class in which we’re only reading one author. That’s right, these 20 books are all just different editions of and commentaries on Homer! OK, he’s important, but $500 important?
Having been there, done that, etc etc, I know why all those bloody books are so expensive – I actually felt ill reading your total, as I know for a fact I would not have been able to afford those books (I had a ‘stipend’ from my cheapskate grad school of $4300 per year. Mind you, the only place I could get to live was $600/mo.)
Anyway – my profs at least would put the books on reserve in the library – is there no way you could do that?
[hijack] I took a medieval historiography my first term in grad school, 4 of us in the class, and the prof put the books on 2 hours reserve. 3 of us were very adult about working out a rota – the 4th guy would check them out and take them back to his rooms and keep them all week, fines be damned. The other 2 guys finally just went to his rooms and took all the books back to the library…there’s always one…[/hijack]
Yeah, but at least we humanities-type people can usually get about 20 or 30 books for $500.
The poor schlubs doing law, engineering, etc. often have to pay over a hundred bucks a book. Then again, those folks generally end up making heaps more money later on, so fuck 'em.
MsBoods- Indeed, my plan is to only buy a selection of the books, the ones I find myself using most based on the syllabus or whatever, and make use of the library (hopefully he knows what reserve is) and/or the kindness of any fellow grad students who managed to afford them all. I am not buying $500 worth of books for one class. I do have 2 other classes, after all.
I could fill pages with semi-annual book rants from the other side of the counter, but Melandry’s book requirement is just plain nuts. What’s this prof requiring that costs so much?
Well, I didn’t get hit too hard this semester - three books, $122. There’s one more I need to buy from Amazon or BN, for another $40, but that’ll be it. Most of mine are good reference works too, that I’ll keep once I finish grad school.
But y’all might try http://www.textbookx.com - what you need might be on there for a lower price.
Well, I didn’t get hit too hard this semester - three books, $122. There’s one more I need to buy from Amazon or BN, for another $40, but that’ll be it. Most of mine are good reference works too, that I’ll keep once I finish grad school.
But y’all might try http://www.textbookx.com - what you need might be on there for a lower price.
While i agree that the number of books required for this course seems way over the top, the books themselves aren’t especially expensive. They seem to average about $25 each, if the figures given are correct. Personally, i like to find books cheaper if i can, but plenty of the books on my shelf cost me more than 25 bucks.
Sorry about the double post folks…kept getting an error. And I’m not associated with that website in any way shape or form other than as a potential customer who hasn’t yet bought anything from them.
I’m going book shopping tomorrow. I already have the book for my mechanics class (I think it was ~$100), but I need to buy books for Physics 2, Microbiology, and Organic Chemistry. (I’m getting them from my school’s bookstore cause I get a book allowance) Any bets on how much they’ll be?
