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Ripoff 101: Gouging Students for Textbooks
Brad Lucier writes "The San Jose Mercury News covers a report by the California Student Public Interest Research Group entitled "Ripoff 101" about the high, and increasing, cost of university textbooks. The story notes several practices that force students to buy new books instead of used and quotes yours truly about how universities are insulated from the costs of books. Is electronic textbook publishing the way to go?"
For a $100 textbook, students sometimes pay $5 per page they read during the semester.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I bought two text books this semster. 1 for Calc2,and 1 for microeconomics...
how much in total? $250. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if we move to electronic textbooks they will implement some silly copy-protection scheme or worse, a law to forbid copying.
FP!
Yeah, it's that Chinese-owned place across Bishop Street, right next to the coffee house. They have no idea what copyright is. If you're going to give an idea, follow through, share the information. sheesh
That always really annoyed me. I mean, I agreed with a lot of what they did, but the idea of the university acting as the bill collector for a lobbying group, and doing it in such a way that most students ended up giving money to these guys without knowing the first thing about them, always struck me as somewhere between rude and corrupt.
And now they're blowing the whistle on unnecessary costs for university students! Pot, kettle, black.
With a couple of books, they're really worth the money. My Bio book is enormous, and has to cover a lot of material; therefore worth the money.
About the used book thing, that's total bullshit, and i'm glad my college doesn't do it.
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It's a monopoly racket, it always has been and it's going to take something dramatic to break it up.
- Book publishers and authors don't want there to be used textbook competition, they only get paid when a new copy is sold. Therefore, they'll gladly do anything in their power to force a new edition, even if it's simply changing a few image sizes so the page numbers change in a ripple effect with no meaningful content change.
- Professors don't care. In fact in some cases they are paid to select the more expensive of two options by bookstores who offer them a kickback based on a percentage of the sales. (Just face it, what's standing in the way of a professor including an Amazon.com affiliate URL on the course's website, knowing that at least a few students will by the required book that way?) And, often the professor is the author of the book, so every student in their course equals a textbook royalty coming their way.
- Universities often either own the bookstore, or at least own the building that the bookstore operation is renting. Therefore, anything that's good for the bookstore is good for the university.
Unless students vote with their feet by boycotting classes that require overpriced textbooks, and threatening to switch schools or majors if a required course requires the overpriced textbook, there's never going to be any change. So long as new books are required every year, and the publishers can keep it that way, the market for used textbooks will dry up.
Doesn't sound like much of either.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
We never needed to buy new 2nd hand was a good option, and perfectly acceptable for most courses was also owning the previous revision for a book, as lecturers took that into account, making it a great deal easier for students. This was in 1999.
What got me however was the extraordinary price of the books. I still have one on Computer Graphics, that I needed to buy new as the 2nd hand copies were unavailable. $129.99 for one textbook.
At least I've had good use from it since.
go to the library and check out older editions of said books. Then just keep renewing them and give em back at the end of the term.
They get fined every year for copyright violation, generally 10-15 grand. There was a huge sting last semester. They don't care, they can make it back in a few months.
There's another place off parc and sherbrooke that's well known by mcgill students. Ah, piracy...
"We will give you 3 dollars wholesale for that book, we have enough."
I would rather burn this 72.50 book for warmth in the middle of the summer stuck in the fucking sahara desert than give it to your for 3 bucks.
---I later sold it for 40 bucks to a girl buying the same book in line. Everyone wins, sort of.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
I don't really understand the complaint. After all, the automobile industry makes minor changes from year to year just to encourage buyers to trade-in. The fashion industry has Fall lines, Spring lines, etc. that change from year-to-year. Major software companies force "upgrades" that are frequently of poorer quality than the product they replace.
They're supposedly trying to get an education.
Well RO101 definitely prepares the students for the real world.
When I went to night school for a couple semesters of Japanese, the textbook for the full course was available for like $70, all 350 pages or so of it. However, there were three types you could get, two of which were higher in price. The cassette- and CD-included ones. The school only had the CD-based ones when I went, four CDs that had the pronounciations for some of the work in the book, but added $15 to the cost of the book, new.
Seeing as how the book was in its second edition, and the CDs have been used in schools across North America for years, it's surprising that the cost to publish (probably only about $7 for the hardback, $2-$3 for the CDs) could be marked up, unless the profits are made to benefit the schools (and probably some "payola" to the teachers who use the books for the classes).
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Following advice from this website, at the beginning of this semester I bought books online, and they were quite a bit cheaper. Even with the overseas shipping and conversion rates I ended paying at least a third less for my books. Whats ever better is if you can buy last semesters books from someone. I find lurking outside of the bookstore at the end of the semester quite effective for picking up used text books from students who know the bookstore is going to screw them on their buy-backs. :-)
There are C textbooks out there that are $100 and not nearly as useful as "Teach yourself C in 24 hours." Admittedly, that's not a great example since those books are so common, but here's a better example. I'm taking a software testing class that called for two textboooks: one was an "actual textbook" that runs about $120, but it's half the length and half the content of the $40 "Managing the testing process." It's crap.
Crappety crap crap, as a matter of fact.
My COmp Sci professor this semester wrote his own book along with 2 other professors.. and we use it online, no problems whatsoever right now
And that would change things how exactly? As I see it, the students would simply be charged "full price" for an electronic copy of a textbook, and then not be able to sell back as used. Or were we thinking that the textbook publishers would give students a break on the price of a mandatory book purchase simply because the publisher didn't have to manufacture paper copies but copies on some sort of electronic media?
Welcome to the net of 1000 lies. Upgrades are scheduled soon that should bring us to the 10,000 lies mark.
One of the things I have been trying to do (through pressuring my Assemblycritter) is to make textbooks not subject to sales tax.
While I don't have the time or the energy to actually put this on the ballot (as I am a student now), I would whole-heartedly support such a move, and submit this hoping someone else will, too.
Then how are academics supposed to make money off of their poorly written, poorly circulated texts?
I'm now doing my Master's at an English University and find that the books are still as expensive! I guess the price goes up with the degree! I understand that these books are very technical, but are they really all worth 150$-200$(CAN)? Seems a bit excessive to me...
DrkBr
The dollar cost isn't the worst. What really irritates is the execrable quality of the content in many of these books. I recently took a Java class, and the book was absolute crap. On one page, in a sidebar, no less, in an example of the precision of a double, the values of PI and E were reversed.
If only that error were not typical.
As to electronic publishing, no thanks. E-books suck, and the PC as a classroom interface is wholly inadequate. Give me paper every time.
--- Bill
When I was at college, nary a course would go by without the lecturer recommending his (I did physics... no 'her') book as the 'seminal text on the subject'. Seminal. Yep.
:-)
The (more serious) bad point is that some lecturers are cosy with publishers, and even make a commission about recommending certain books. This isn't right, IMHO. The faster other universities go the way of MIT with openCourseware (yes, I know it's a year delayed, but they produce it in the right year) with a reviewable (and editable, though that's not at MIT yet, AFAIK), the better.
So, electronic publishing - big thumbs up. Wiki version, with verified (PGP ?) annotation/citation, even better
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
The University of Phoenix's online classes only require 1 physical book for the entire duration of your study with them. The rest are made available online in PDF, txt or HTML format.
Tuition also includes access to a decent online library of periodicals, journals, newspapers, books and other research material.
It eliminates both the cost of books (tuition is no higher than traditional schools w/physical books) as well as the need to lug them around.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I wanted to yell at him, "THEN WHY DO YOU MAKE US BUY THE NEW ONES?!"
But I realized that many of my professors used the books they wrote themselves - conflict of interest, anyone?
***
No, it isn't.
Black and white textbooks with minimal illustration (only where actually useful) and paperback addendums to keep older additions useful are the answer.
I looked through my father's old chemical engineering and mathematics textbooks, and they are smaller, more concise, and better references than any single textbook I've received in my college years. I keep them on my shelf, and sell my own books back at the end of the year.
Electronic books won't sit around for my kids to find someday. In fact, I doubt very much they'll sit around past one or two ebook product cycles. Also, I doubt book publishers want to seriously deal with the threat of a textbook napster. I don't know a single college student (my self included) who wouldn't feel fully justified in taking back from those greedy bastards.
In the meantime: get an old edition, then use the library reserve or borrow a friend's copy to do the problem sets.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Guess what I go to university,a and naturally, our textbook are inflated in price. I usually save 30 - 50% by buying the same textbook online @ Amazon, Chapters, or Indigo.
Wasn't this same topic covered about 4 months ago?
Something along the lines of people/Students purchasing books from Canada?
University of California, Irvine's official bookstore has notoriously high markups on coursebooks. You know things are bad when every quarter you have faculty who tell their students to not buy books from the store, but order online or from a competing off-campus store.
I am able to buy xeroxed copies of most textbooks and programming books in our marketplace for 50 rupees or less, however I am unsure if these copyies would be accepted well in America. I am particularly fond of this book, which I paid over 150 rupees for a color copy. I wishing that is was bound however.
I get my textbooks from a classmate who is from India. a 133$ CDN electro magnetics textbook here goes for 20$ CDN there. it actually costs more to get them shipped (30$/each) then the book itself.
they are soft cover, black and white and thinner paper, but the content is the same and the savings are rad.
I am never buying another textbook from the university bookstore again.
i get all my textbooks on emule :-)
seriously though, i'm not sure we can make old textbooks available for free, but there might be some future in GPL style publishing
--rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
This industry is a scam with forced purchases, oftentimes virtually unused, and very low buy back. Don't know if it's the schools or the publishers, but someone is making too much money on this.
This is just another side effect of a copyright society. Although copyrights alledgely promote the creation of works, does not mean they promote the dissimation of usefull works. Alot of people think that cheap tabloids that are pennies on the page, and expensive text books that are pages on the dollar is just another aspect of a free market society, along with the hype over substance that goes with - but it is not. Copyrights are not free market because they are not about freedom, they are about controll. One of these days people will learn that just because an institution calls somthing a right, does not mean that it is. The sooner we learn that with copyrights the better - especially in the information age where the only way to differentiate free speech content from copyright content is to appoint people to censor it.
I never gave in to selling my books back to the bookstore. They offered me $16 for the book I bought fot $120!! You gotta be kidding me.
I put the book for sale in the student paper, charged $50 for it. That's less than what the bookstore was selling it for used ($75). It's win/win for both me and the student I'm selling my book to. Fuck my student bookstore. They really do gouge as deep as possible.
Sometimes they would offer *nothing* for my expensive book.. because "a new edition is coming out and the professor will be using that book." And guess who wrote the book!
Seriously, it's a good racket they have going. Hmmm... maybe I should get into it.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
It seems to be working well for one of the books I've encountered. I'm doing a graduate math course, the details of which are irrelevant, but suffice to say the subject matter is reasonably obscure, and won't exactly have books flying off the shelves. The textbook assigned for the course is available online - I thought this sounded great when I was told this: often I end up borrowing books from the library where possible, or just skipping using the textbook altogether. Occasionally I am forced to buy texts, and this is often annoying to me.
What I have come to discover, however, is that this text provides a beautiful explanations of very difficult material. It's the sort of book I would be gald to have around in my personal library. I was able to find this out by using the downloadable version of the text. Now, of course, I am planning to buy the text, and will gladly reccomend it to anyone else who happens upon the subject area. Sure, I could just print the downloaded PDF, but I may as well have a nice bound copy - and at this point I feel like supporting a good author. There is just something nicer about having the actual book, as opposed to a bunch of printed PDF pages.
I suspect other books could benefit equally from such a system. Of course, if your book sucks, and the material is poorly presented... well, maybe that won't work so well... but maybe you shouldn't be looking to foist your crap onto unsuspecting students who are forced to buy the text?
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Seriously... I realize new books cost a lot, but the previous edition (especially if the campus bookstore will no longer carry it) costs a pittance, like $5-$10 if you can find it used online. And you almost always can.
As for the questions changing (the only real difference between most editions that I ever noticed), go to the library and photocopy those two pages per chapter. Adds an extra buck to the cost of the book, but still comes out quite a lot less than $80-$200 per book.
However, to address the deeper issues here - Well, publishers have every right to charge what they want. And with a captive audience, they just have to dream of dollar-signs and they get it. At this point, though, they've gone beyond anything even remotely realistic, and I for one do not feel the least bit of guilt for having used exactly the method I describe above. I'd rather have had the correct books, but on a college student's budget, the $300+ savings per semester buys a LOT of instant ramen noodles.
Don't professors know the incredible price of the books they are selecting? Why not stick to an older (last year's) edition so students can get it used of the web or from each other? The university bookstores are awful too. They buy back the books for a ridiculously low price so they can sell it back for almost the retail price.
just photocopy the needed pages from your University Library reserve collection - if they aren't on reserve (or not enough copies) then demand 'em.
Many universities have the same textbooks in the library, and with a roll of coins or an evening at Kinko's you can make your own coursepack.
I know RMS was being an alarmist (as usual?) when he wrote it, but The Right to Read story sounds like the next step to that sort of thing. Good textbooks on subjects will server you long after college. If I hadn't needed the money for food so bad at points, I would have kept a few more of them.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I have a professor who told me to a) buy a new copy of the textbook and b) write the answers to the assignment directly in the book. I thought the idea was absolutly insane until I went down to the coop and bought the book... Turns out that good old Dr. Roth wrote the book himself :/
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I bought an economics textbook for $85.
I sold it back for $15.
I got some mixed signals from that class
Yes, but think of all the fundamental changes in Calculus that take place each year that you are funding. The book has to be expensive if they want to keep up with ever changing subjects like calc.
There is a pretty good rant on the subject here
It talks about how Universities actively protect thier monopolies to make money and alleges that they are in cahoots with the book publishers and take kickbacks from them. Goes so far as to compare universities protecting thier outdated bookstaores with the RIAA.
Interesting read at the least.
- Nicholas
The most infuriating experience I had with textbooks was a book for a class that required the student to enter a registration code from the book into a web page. This was used for some web based quizzes and exercises. Problem was, once you used the code it was invalid so students were required to buy a new book for that class. Plus there were bugs, a good 5% of the codes from NEW books were not being accepted by the website so those students had to contact the publisher or webmaster or somebody.
Online or electronic textbooks seem like they could help with the pricing issues described in the report. However, experience teaches me that there are plenty of ways it could make things worse! Plus most people sell back their books at the end of the quarter or semester. Don't count on that option for eBooks.
Most bookstores have policies that say once you break the seal on the software that's included in a book, it moves from the book return policy over to the software return policy that just isn't as friendly. Therfore, adding a useless CD with nothing but open source software trips that policy, and cuts down on the number of returns...
I graduated college in 1981, and in the preface to one of my freshman textbooks the author wrote " while the reasons for the new edition are more economic than pedagogic .... when the sale of used textbooks starts cutting into the sale of new ...", I decided that textbooks in general were one big racket, and that was over 25 years ago.
Without a doubt, the books on computer-related topics are the most expensive, bar none. They become obsolete fastest (find me an "obsolete" math text published in the last century, please!). Fall 2002 was the worst - I plunked down $850 for 5 classes worth of books. The worst was for my electrical stastistics class: $100 for a 400 pages book - 25 cents/page.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
- Wait a week or two before buying your books. That way you'll know if the professor will be using it throughout the course. Talk to other students who have taken the course and ask them if the professor used the book.
- See if said student still has the textbook for the class (and hasn't sold it for a $10 bag of pot), and ask to "borrow" it... or buy it in exchange for a $10 bag of pot... pot *is* a valid form of currency in college, you know.
- Check out all the online bookstores, but make sure they have the book in stock! I once got burned by a now-defunct online textbook site because the book I needed was back ordered for 6 weeks. Other than that, you can usually get some slick deals (almost anything is better than the campus bookstore).
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
As an American student, book prices are absolutely ridiculous. A quick example: Physics: Principles with Applications, 5th Ed from Amazon.com costs $131 while the same book from Amazon.co.uk costs 30.09 pounds or about $55.
Someone I used to know with access to a document feeder was issuing PDF versions of textbooks to computer science students at my University: That is, until he was caught selling them by an undercover cop, charged, and fined several hundred thousand dollars.
=Cheers! Chris McAllister
The Chinese grad students in my program buy completely legal copies at crazy low prices in China. These versions are much more flimsy and made with cheap paper, but when they can get a Stevens TCP/IP Vol 1 for 5-10 bucks you have to laugh. Much like drug prices in the US....
I came to the U.S. as a student this year and textbooks are by far far far the most expensive things here as compared to India. Literally all my textbooks cost from 10 to 20 times more than the same books in India. So, I get my friends who are coming from home to get books for me. Eg: Computer networks by Andrew Tannenbaum - the most widely used CN textbook costs $88 dollars on amazon. Back home, I bought the same edition brand new, though in softcover and with 'international edition' on it for 5 dollars ! The contents are the same - word for word !
The college I work for is addressing this issue by developing Alternative Instructional Materials (AIM) for lower level classes that most students need. Example: Composition I
These materials are distributed in electronic format (free of charge) to the students. The students receive a text that is custom made for the class and can be easily updated as needed.
Some students like the concept, some don't. Some of the students feel that they have to print the electronic documents and feel that it is unfair to be expected to print a large amount of material.
Overall, the concept is working great and I think additional texts will be replaced. This doesn't make the publisher book representatives very happy but tough for them.
Some books are worth keeping.
My freshman intro to psychology book is the most expensive doorstop I've ever owned.
1. Go to class
2. Get syllabus
3. Turn on PowerBook, hop on school's wireless network
4. Order class's textbook from Amazon.com sellers while teacher discusses syllabus
5. Repeat 3-4 times
Saved a ton of money this semester. Many of my CS books are sold at half price (new) from Amazon sellers.
Unlike what most people seem to be saying, I have had a number of professors here at Fresno State encourage us to use places like Amazon, and a few have even suggested specific sites for buying discounted books (one CS professor told us about www.bookpool.com).
Some other professors have made heavy use of our library's E-Reserves, where they can photocopy pages out of their own books, and we can log onto the library's website and see the pages in PDF format.
Also, Fresno State has the deal with O'Reilly, where us students can read many O'Reilly books online for free, through a login process in the school's website.
Interestingly enough, virtually all of this has come from my CS professors. Very few of my other professors ever made discount purchase suggestions or used the E-Reserves.
I go to a college that uses mostly E-Texts and the books are optional. The book company, not owned by the college, jacks up the price to $60USD a book. Also it is not always the same version or revision that E-Text is. My $60USD book was offered a $23USD buyback. It costs $45USD to print the E-Text at Kinko's so instead I opted to buy a cheap Laser Printer for $200USD and print out the E-Text to that.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I remember when I was in school, the book my math instructor wanted was no longer being printed, so the solution was for the school's printer to photocopy the book and bind it with those black-backed plastic binder thingees. (This was all done with the permission of the book publisher.) The cost for this half-assed approximation of a book? Full cover price of the book when it was last published.
I'm probably beaten to the punch already, but it was always amusing (in a hopeless sort of way) how our Calculus 101 textbook would change every two years. I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that the introductory field of Calculus hasn't changed at all over the last 100 years.
All the bastards do is introduce a few new questions at the end of the chapter and call it a new edition.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
In case anyone didn't notice, bookstores sell books for the MSRP, which means the bookstores aren't the damn problem. Instead, you should be asking yourselves why in the world publishers jack up the prices like they do?
Just buy books when you know for sure you need them. I think the majority of my CS classes "require" books, but most never use them. Perhaps if professors are so eager to keep down textbook costs, they could try not requiring books unless they plan on making it worthwhile.
When I designed the "CMS" (Course Management System) in 1995 for Prentice Hall Higher Education (the biggest textbook publisher then), they were most concerned with competing with themselves in the used textbook market. They wanted to put out workbook websites for every textbook, so "used" wouldn't even exist. And they had flexible pricing per institution in mind. I wonder what happened to that marketing strategy?
--
make install -not war
My college is fond of Thompson Course Technology paperback books. These books start falling apart at the binder about 3/4 of the way through the semester.
None of them can be used as a technical reference for life.
In addition these sorry paperbacks often cost as much and often more than hardbacks.
You have a choice in which books you buy, students do not.
I purchased a used Pascal book in the early '80s and when I took my first Pascal class in 1991 - that book had just been eliminated from the course. The trend to bundle CDs with the required books just drives up the price, and some classes, especially high-schools and elementary schools, the subjects don't change from one year to the next. English and Math do evolve obviously, but is there such a drastic change occuring for school districts to purchase new books each year? At the college level I can see a greater possibilty for new books, but the cost has always surpassed the value.
Obviously everyone who visits this site does some amount of reading, but I imagine that we all have always found webpages and scrolling a little more of a hassle than regular books.
As a small time web developer and former page layout guy I have been watching with great interest to see how web-based reading models develop. My personal favorite thus far is without a doubt The Internation Herald Tribune. The full text is loaded, but there is no scolling to reach the next column of paragraphs. Just a click. I find that it is not only very easy to read, but also much better than scrolling either by scrollbar or wheel. This website has a masthead an other distractions, imagine what it would be like if the only other thing besides the text was a page number. As displays increase in size, so will the usability of web-based text books. The additional ability of hyperliking text within each book would obviously revolutionize reading a great deal. If hyperlinks within the text had multiple possible contextual destinations - everyone could learn more, faster. IMHO.
Stuff that matters.
As a foreigner student currently in the US, I was really surprised to see how expensive these books are here.
Especially when taking into account that the same books, in English, orderer by one of the campus bookstores directly from the publisher here in the USA, cost around US$ 20 (yes, you read that right) for us in Brazil, including shipping expenses and the profit from the bookstore selling it to us. It was a paperback edition, but hell, it's a big price difference.
And I've seen the same being said about Europe too (buying American books there is cheaper than it is in the USA), in some articles that were run in the campus newspaper last year.
Marcelo Vanzin
I guess I was lucky. Keble College issued me with a copy of every textbook I needed for the core part of my Physics degree (they had lots of sets in the library which were handed down from year to year), with a couple of exceptions which were all in the library anyway. Many of the books were ten years or so old - I guess that doesn't matter so much in undergrad physics as it does in CS. Usually we got given photocopies of the questions for each week's tutorial anyway just in case there were new edition type clashes.
On the other hand, a friend of mine who read biochemistry specialising in genetics never had a textbook at all - he claimed that after the first year the stuff he was learning was too new to be in the textbooks yet, and when it was in them it would probably be outdated and nearly worthless.
But can't you just club together, buy one copy of each book between about four of you and then arrange to do your assignments on different nights (or do some cheeky photocopying)? (Or get a couple of older editions as well and use the current edition for referencing the questions to overcome tricks like the image size changing to force page renumbering.)
Does the university actually check that each student has their own physical copy of the correct edition of each textbook?
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
"Ripoff 101" could also describe Public Interest Research Groups.
In my first two years I dutifully lined up at the campus book store, forked over $350 for 4 books and went home a bit depressed and with sore feet from standing for 6 hours.
Then along came Chapters (Canadian book chain). I discovered that even if they didn't carry a particular book, they would order it for me. Downside? I was bookless for two weeks at the start of a semester but it never really hurt me. Upside? The bookstore on campus always jacked prices by 10% to "cover costs". Chapters sold at MSRP less 15% for having a membership.
So in my next three years I saved a combined total of $520 versus the campus book store. One particular book was $140 on campus. Chapters sold it to me for $60 (The MSRP) and I sold it used for $100. Ingoring the savings, I got free shipping on orders over $60 and they were delivered right to my door. No lineup for me.
I imagine Amazon would be the same.
It works sort of like an extended rental and it works out great for everyone. The students don't feel taken and books are almost always available.
http://wikibooks.org is the daughter site of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) and is dedicated to the development and dissemination of free, open content textbooks. There are a couple dozen incomplete books there now. The goal is to have complete textbooks there that people can use on line or print for free. The volume of content is growing quickly and all it takes is for a couple of people to keep donating a bit of time here and there, and we will eventually have a top-quality, free product that will put the textbook cartels on the defensive.
in 1990 i had to buy a PAIR of mechanics books (statics and dynamics) at $93 a pop! they were ~300 pages each! my 1000+ page Diffeq book was only $85.
those fukkers.
my alma mattar, RPI, still doesn't offer complete e-texts for most of its core classes.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
they charge 20 dollars more than PSRP.
that is on average....
as the course levels go up, the book prices and the differential with the PSRP go up.
I am in Real Number Analysis right now, a 400 level Class on Proof. I payed 140 dollars for a text book that is all of 8 Chapters, 200 pages, and less than an inch think.
on-line, you could get the same edition which has been out for about 8 years, for 70 bucks!!! I am on loans, so unless I want to buy my books out of my pocket upfront then wait to get reimbursed, I am stuck with the gouging.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
" Is electronic textbook publishing the way to go?"
Is P2P the better way to go?
The professors who self-publish their own books for $5 a copy and demand that the students buy them in the U-bookstore for $50 or $75?
Required reading for Economics 101:
Rip-off 101: How The Current Practices Of The Textbook Industry Drive Up The Cost Of Collge Textbooks
Cost: $120.00
When I was in college, waaayy back, it was the graduate math books that were high-priced. Made sense, since they sold to a very limited audience. Later, I noticed it was computer books. This I could also see, since they'd be obsolete within a year.
But my daughter's taking a first-year Spanish class at PSU, and the textbook (with a couple CD's) was $160!!! And this is not a particularly thick or fancy book, either.
Application Fee $100.00
Due at time of application
Tuition Per Credit:
Due two weeks prior to start date of each course
Undergraduate $440.00
Graduate $545.00
Nursing Undergraduate $385.00
Nursing Graduate $430.00
MAED Graduate $430.00
Military Undergraduate $352.00
Doctorate $620.00
I ended up keeping a VB textbook I paid $90 for, and it turned out I needed to take the previous level class after getting an A in the 'second level VB' course, so I'm glad I didn't burn or toss my text, as it was actually the same text. Also, I've got at least 15 decent books on Unix/Linux, but I was required to buy a $120 textbook that is equal to Unix for dummies, just so I can complete a few moronic exercises for an intro to Unix class :(
2 semesters ago, I had a course where the professor told me not to buy the book. He said he couldn't understand why it now costed more than $100, that it used to be $50 and that he doesn't make any money from it anyway.
Dude a similar article was on /. at the beginning of last semester! Yes text books cost a lot. Get into publishing and stop whining or accept it and stop whining.
I can't find the article but there were plenty of links to sites that will sell you the exact same book from over seas for half the cost. One I remember was a book that was around 150 here and 50 shipped from the UK.
No sig for you!!
A trend around here is to buy/sell textbooks through online listings. The prices hover right in the middle of the prices bookstores charge you for it used, and the amount they'll buy it back for. Also (having been burned several times by the new edition problem), these are great places to sell an old edition of a textbook, as many classes really don't depend on the new version.
However, I think that electronic formats are picking up momentum, but not from the publishing companies. This semester, I only purchased 1 textbook; all other classes use only lecture notes or materials online! I've found that more and more instructors/professors are relying on their own notes, instead of finding a textbook that only partially covers the course topics.
"Yarrgh! I be just a paintin' of a head..."
Is electronic textbook publishing the way to go?
Yeah, right. Pretty soon we'll be paying $100 for the electronic version, which we'll only be able to use for one semester, and forget about any possibility of buying used, or selling back your book at the end of the semester. The material costs of textbooks are tiny compared to the ridiculous prices they charge. Switching to electronic textbooks just means more profit for the scam artists that produce and sell these books.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Book prices are really aweful. Thankfully, several of my professors are sympathetic. One programming course I'm taking requires no book purchases at all -- we are only using documentation available on the web. Another professor -- this one of political science -- makes 'educational copies' (pdf form mostly) of most of our readings available through the university library's electronic reserves. In the three classes I've taken with him, the books required to supplement the pdfs have never added up to more than $50 per class; one was as low as $13.
I only wish more professors realized that $150 or more in cash actually matters to someone who is living off of loans.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. --Dan Kaminsky
Textbooks often engage in the practice of changing the problem sets around so that the numbering is different or different values are used. They are essentially the same problems, just shifted around.
For example, version 5 may say, "If a train was approaching from the West at 30 mph, and....", but version 6 might reword it to, "If a train was approaching from the East at 25 mph, and....
Table-ized A.I.
One problem, aside from new editions, is that every time they even reprint the book, the price goes up.
I'm taking a data mining class and the textbook (which the professor wrote) goes for $215 on Amazon. On the first day, when the professor asked if everyone had the book and someone said she didn't (leading to a quick discussion of where to get it), he was shocked at the price; he said that the last time he caught the class, it only cost $150. (Fortunately I got it for $60 online; thank goodness for the internet)
Twenties Retirement
Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookexchange/ Its code for a student book exchange. I set it up for my school: www.westernbookexchange.com and it works. I sold all of my books, and was able to find about half of them from other students. Saves a lot of money for everyone. Amir is getting ready to post a new version. Mine is a highly modified version, I can send anyone the code if they would like. David Degner
I bought 2 books new, but online one semester. They took 2 weeks to arrive, but I got $90 list price books for $45 each. At the end of the semester, I sold thpse 2 books back to the university book store during their Book Buyback week (don't get me started on how the buyback period ends the weekend before the last finals take place) for a total of almost $70.
It felt good to get something from them for their usual policy of paying $20 for a book and selling it as used for $60.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They claim the cd supplement, and new editions are the key factors driving up textbook costs. I doubt adding a cd changes their cost structure significantly. As for new editions, in electrical engieering anyway, this is important, since the field changes so quickly, and their are numerous bugs that need fixing. Saying we don't need new editions is like saying version 1.0 of software is good enough. The reason textbooks are expensive is simple supply and demand. You'll never sell even a fraction of the number of copies of Harry Potter, so it will cost more to make a profit given fixed costs are similar
Vote for Pedro
I know a woman whose daughter goes there.....is it true they don't allow any form of calculator near a math class...even Calculous!!!
oh my god, can you imagine the extra work they would have to do just to analyzes a graph!!!
I will say though that not having a calculator feels liberating, I forgot mine for a month straight when I went to class....I felt like my brain was getting much more nimble at calculations and avoiding simple mistakes...unfortunately, I fell back into the calculator spiral...it is like crack!!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Makes me wonder if the mafia isn running the new/used text book field.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
> A new textbook costs $102.44 on average
> According to the Association of American Publishers and the National Association of College Stores,
> paper, printing and editorial costs account for an average of 32.3 cents of every dollar of the
> textbook cost--the largest share of the total.
They are claiming that printing the book costs over $33?
Amazing that bookstores have so many books below that price, *retail*... obviously everyone is selling at a loss! Books priced lower than paper!
I paid more for books this semester than I did for freakin' tuition!
What is your penile percentile?
" Much like drug prices in the US...."
Yup! I buy my drugs from this guy who sells out of his luxury automobile.
First, you need to buy the new edition, b/c the professor issues homework by pages and the questions are different in the new book.
Second, your classmates are not going to lend out their books to you even when they plan on using it the day before the due date.
Third, the professor wrote the book, so he needs buyers.
Fourth, by the end of the year you want to sell your book back, but the bookstore will buy it for 10% of the price. You'd sell it to a classmate taking it next year, but there's a new edition out!
And finally, School library's reference books have already been stolen.
For over 30 years, Kerry's primary occupation has been stalking lonely heiresses. Not to get back to his combat experience, but Kerry sees a room full of wealthy widows as "a target-rich environment." This is a guy whose experience dealing with tax problems is based on spending his entire adult life being supported by rich wives. What does a kept man know about taxes? Kerry is like some character in a Balzac novel, an adventurer twirling the end of his mustache and preying on rich women. This low-born poser with his threadbare pseudo-Brahmin family bought a political career with one rich woman's money, dumped her, and made off with another heiress to enable him to run for president. If Democrats want to talk about middle-class tax cuts, couldn't they nominate someone who hasn't been a poodle to rich women for past 33 years?
A similar story was posted at another site today, and here's what I posted there, slightly edited for different context:
I have worked at the college bookstore here, and will relate how we do it. First off, our standard markup on new textbooks is 25%. Not great for the students, but also paltry compared to markup on the other stuff we sell (clothing and gifts is like 75% markup at least). However, if a book comes with the price printed on it, we price it at the printed price, even if it's at less than 25% markup. Some stores don't do this, resulting in an obvious rip-off. Of course this depends on the person who receives/tags the book checking each one for a price so it can be set appropriately. I always was very conscientious about this, but at big stores with hundreds and hundreds of books coming in a day, it would be easy to skip this step.
As for the buyback, this is probably what most people don't fully understand. As far as I know, most colleges do it similar to this. We contract book buyers from a used-book company (in our case, Nebraska Book Company, but there are others, depending on location). They come in and are the ones buying the books, not bookstore employees. The bookstore receives textbook orders from professors and puts together a list of books that the store will buy back directly from students. These books will be bought back at 50% of the new price of the book and put on the shelves. If you had bought a used book (we price used books at 75% of the new price) and sold it back for 50%, that's not great, but it's also not terrible. However, if you bring in a book that is NOT on the bookstore's list to buy, then it is the used book company that is buying it, at whatever it's worth on the wholesale market. At that point you are the lowest peg on the book totem pole and should NOT sell your books! They'll buy it for a few bucks, and then ship all of their purchases to their warehouse. They then mark it up and sell the books back to bookstores, who then mark it up again and sell to students. I'm not sure about the percentages in this, but it's not like the bookstore buys books for $5 and sells them right back for $100, at least not at my store. What is more likely is this: say you buy a book for $100 new. You go to sell it back, but the store hasn't received an order for that book yet, so the book company buys it, for maybe about $30. Then the store receives an order for the book and buys some from the used book company for about $50-55 and sells it for $75. The numbers aren't great, and again I'm not sure if they're right, but it's probably something like that.
Finally, even though I work at the store and can get a 10% discount, I've only bought a couple books there the last couple semesters. I've bought them online and saved 36% off what I would have paid, even counting the 10%, so I saved about 42% off what "normal" people would have paid.
The peer-to-peer solution
Start a free online group at, e.g., groups.yahoo.com where people can advertise their used textbooks for free. Charge $0.00 middleman fee. Books are shipped over the sneaker transport system. A more advanced website could have a better user interface than a mailing list, but a mailing list is better than nothing.
The open source solution
{Requires greater change in the system} Pressure instructors to use textbooks licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License only. A student assignment could be to contribute content to the textbook.
It seems to me that there is a cycle now that is going to be difficult to break:
1) Prices rise
2) People buy used books instead
3) Publishers get less money because people bought more used books.
4) To offset lower sales, see step 1.
As far the usefulness of such books, that is really up to the student. College is not high school. The professor is not there to hold your hand and walk you though the books. The professor has less than three hours a week to teach a class. That time is not enough time for the student to learn. That is why it is recommended that the student review all pertinent material before class. Such material may include books, CDs, etc, much of which will never be covered in the class. Not all students will need to do this. Not all students have the skill or discipline to do this. In either case, as long as the professor is communicating effectively, it is not the professor's fault.
As far as new editions are concerned, the faculty has all the power. If the faculty so chooses, they can recommend an old edition. They can then talk about the updates in class or have additional resources for the students. Of course this costs the professor time that might be better used. And how much is this going to save? $300 a year. Perhaps if you are at some university in which the students have no money, or are not going to be motivated to use the book, this is a significant savings. But if the student is paying the $10K average tuition and fees? It would be like buying a top of line computer and then putting in the cheapest no name memory upgrade.
There is an Steve Harvey show in which he is trying to start class and none of he students pencils or paper. He says something like 'I see 5000 worth of shoes and not a pencil among you.' And i see this all the time. Kids who always have a dollar every day for candy, but can't come up with 50 cents for a pack of paper or 25 cents for a pencil. I have also seen a documentary on college kids in Britain complaining about high tuition while chain smoking the incredible expensive cigarettes.
If education has little value to you, you will always complain about the costs. If you have gone throug life expecting knowlelege to be spoon fed to you, then you will always complain when you have to earn you knowlege.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I attended Auburn University, which has one campus-run bookstore and two off-campus bookstores. One afternoon in an Econ class, we were challenged for extra credit to find out how much profit was made on our textbook over its lifetime, so a few of us set out to see.
Factors we took into consideration were (among others): purchase price with volume pricing (we had an insider), how many times a book could be resold until it became unusable or was obsolete (around six-eight consecutive quarters, thanks to the publishers), and how much money was offered to students when books were sold back based on its condition.
The numbers floored our instructor. A book which cost the bookstore US$90 initially made around 480% profit over its lifetime. What that told me is that the publishers may be making a pot of money off students, but the "local booksellers" are also profiting pretty shamelessly.
- Jack
I sold a large number of my textbooks after finishing the course to someone in the year below me for 1/2 price. I was happy to get some cash back and the buyer was happy to save so much money.
What you have to remember is there is no way you are going to be using any of those books again so why keep them? Trust me - I have been working for 10 years and have had very little need to look at those compsci and engineering textbooks. If you do need to look at them go to the library, get work to buy it, or call up a friend you did the course with. Chances are their copies of the texts are taking up shelf space or in their garage.
Companies seem to enjoy ripping students off. Coke has bought our university and they charge outrageous prices for their products. On the order of $1.75 for a bottle of coke just under 600 ml, and $1.25 for a Can. The sad part is there is no alternative on campus because the university gets funded by Coke. Most students don't have vehicals to go else ware for soft drinks and so pay the gouging prices.
Democratic Assembly member Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, chairwoman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, said Thursday she and others will introduce legislation intended to persuade publishers to provide more unbundled textbooks and explain changes in new editions, and encourage faculty to consider price when choosing books.
I really don't think that the government should be wasting it's time with something like this. For people who are interested in escaping the high prices of the bookstores there are already alternatives:
I really don't see a reason for the government to intervene here.
My blog
But we put a stop to it (this was quite few years ago)
That entire "negative checkoff system" where they automatically got money (unless you said otherwise) was in place at the University of Florida. It annoyed the students so much that they got that little rule changed, costing FPIRG several hundred thousand dollars per year.
Needless to say, their anti-rule-change campaign was feverish, frantic, and futile... the students voted to remove their little "negative check box" system, effectively defunding them.
It was so beautiful... students standing up and taking their own money back... brought a tear to my eye.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
(Note for stevezero: Since you didn't take a pro/con position, I'm not really directing this rant at you or your opinion - just ranting on your implication of copyright in general)
Laws, copyright or otherwise, only go as far as people are willing to let them. If the shit stinks, it stinks. If it's still legal, then it's legally stinky shit, but it's still shit.
I see no problems with circumventing stinky shit, no matter why it stinks. The textbook scam is well known. It's a huge conjob perpetuated by everyone from the tops of the publishing houses down to individuals at institutions. If it weren't that this were a con of the grandest scale, and that the students have no choice or say in the matter, I would say "just don't buy them" such as is the case with crummy, overpriced music. However, when left with no alternatives, I see nothing wrong with fighting fire with fire. If they don't want the stuff ripped off, they shouldn't be trying to rip off the people who have to buy it.
Or, to put it another way: Boo, fucking, hoo. Addison Weselly et. al. can get down on their knees and take my dick in their mouths for all I care. I hope the companies go under for this shit and the employees turn on management with full bore lawsuits. I'm sick of big corps. taking advantage of everyone else like this, and I'm not going to be some sappy apologist saying "don't stoop to their level" in a lame attempt to excuse spinelessness.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
>Is electronic textbook publishing the way to go?"
Potentially. I would, however, like to highlight an alternative. I'm involved with various universities that are currently developing e-print repositories. Their primary goal is to develop a model that will encourage authors to deposit articles or thesis work. These are usually available for free, or a small access fee.
ePrints-UK has a list of the various repositories available.
Our family has text books dating back one hundred years. Why? The edge notes. Mark up the books with your ideas and comments and make them priceless for generations.
I'm a junior (math major, yay) at the U of Michigan Dearborn, and most of my books this semester were short (under 450 pages), small... and 100-120 dollars. I went online and got almost all of them for around $70 each, and with regular shipping I got them all in time. Still, the best deal I got was in person, buying books used from a friend who took the class the previous semester. In conclusion, dolphins.
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
Is electronic textbook publishing the way to go?
I do *not* want electronic textbooks. Paper is 1000 times easier to use. It's a lot faster to pull out a book and turn to a page then try to look through one electronically.
What about poor students who cannot afford a laptop/reader?
If you assume that the school can print them... well, at least at my school, you lose color printing and solid binding.
(This all leaves out the fact that the market is bearing the current price of textbooks, not that I am happy with it. Oh, and since this is the case, if all textbooks are electronic, won't prices simply go back up to the market price?)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Yes, now how much did you plunk down for your education? (excluding books) Did you get your money's worth there? Why focus on the small portion of your education, on which you spend a relatively small amount, compared to the other part, in which your "return on investment" is even lower?
At the University of Wisconsin they maintain a library of textbooks for most (maybe all) of the classes. At the begining of the semester you go check out the books you need for your classes. At the end of the semester you return them. If you like a book, you can always keep it and pay for it. Seems to work pretty well.
I've noticed as well, at least in Canada, that there are a few select book companies that have a monopoly on University and College textbooks. I believe that the Universities get money from these publishers (or "further discounts") if they use their books.
I usually wait for the first day of class before buying books. I read through the course descrpition and determine if the book would even be useful. Futher, even if the text is revised, teachers often don't base examinations on the extra material.
Used bookstores far off-campus are my friend. The ones close by always over-charge.
By all means, make books electronic. Especially for courses that require extensive reading [like my contracts class].It is also much hard to highlight and write in the margins of a electronic
All you need is a scanner and now you have Association of American Publishers going after P2P networks. Now if I can only bittorrent me a box of cup-o-noodles then that will be sweet. :-)
Don't buy the book.
Seriously. At the start of the semester, ignore the books entirely. Buy the book the day you first need it. I started doing that a couple years into college; for the rest of my time, I think I averaged one or two books a semester. Most classes didn't require the book at all. (Often you could pick between reading the book and going to class; doing both was redundant.)
For classes that did require the book, I was often able to get away with borrowing it from a friend a once or twice.
How well this approach works probably depends on the discipline you're studying; I'm certain not everyone could do this. Give it a try, however--you might be surprised.
(Ripoff #2: School meal plans. One day, I calculated the per meal cost of my eat-as-often-as-you-want plan, and realized that I could eat out at a restaurant for every meal and spend less money. After that, I stopped paying for the meal plan and started paying on a per-meal basis at the cafeteria.)
I went to the University to get smart, and when I got smart, I left.
The concept of a degree being necessary had been so successfully marketed to me, that it took me 18 months to let go of my tenaciously held ideals, and to truly grasp what a consummate racket it all is. It's shocking when you see it; how many ways students are getting systematically bilked.
When textbooks go electronic, they will only facilitate improved efficiency in the extraction of money from students. DRM, anybody? Pirate a book and face jail time. I can hear it now.. "Microsoft's Textbook Division owns you..."
Today's printed textbooks at least permit multiple use (until next year's version comes out) as well as some secrecy and anonymity in copying.
I'm a sophomore computer engineering major and I just started my spring semester with shelling out hundreds on books. I didn't buy any from my school's bookstore because I don't want to give them the money. I instead bought them used off the internet. I didn't save that much money, but I did it just to make a point to not give the store money. The amount they gouge students when they buy them and the little amount they offer for buybacks is downright insulting. Their niggardly attitude forces me to find my books elsewhere, and so I do.
Currently I am taking economics at a midwestern university. The cost of the textbook is $155 and it is the third edition of the book. After going through the used section of the bookstore I noticed there was nothing different between the second and third edition. The cost of the used book was $15. Come to find out there was "differences" between the two editions, three words in the entire 900+ page book. After learning this I was angry to say the least but I could not do anything about it since the third edition is required for the course.
I was fortunate enough that I did not buy a single new textbook. My tips:
1. Naturally buy used if possible. Often you can get away with an older edition, just make sure your prof approves of it.
2. Make sure the book will even be useful. I doubt anyone opens their book until midterms anyway, so just wait it out.
3. Use the library liberally, they may offer the book on reserve.
4. If you absolutely MUST buy new, shop around on the net. Although in my experience its the publishers that are gouging, not your bookstore.
It's a sick sad system that I try and subvert at every turn, I suggest you do the same.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Having had the dubious pleasure of working in a college bookstore for a year, I've learned quite a bit about how things work in the text book world.
First, it?s the publishers making the money, not the bookstore. The constantly renewed editions, bundled materials, and so on--that's all on the publishers end. Often, the reps from the publishers work closely with the profs to ensure students pay as much as possible. The bookstore orders exactly what it's told to. If we could get it used, we did--the store's margin on used books was larger, especially as my store was a Follett store, and had access to Follett's used book warehouse.
Second, when you get less than ten percent of what you paid, it's not because the store is trying to gouge you. When we bought a book back that we knew we could sell the next semester, the student typically got back fifty percent of what they paid. If we did not need it the next semester, then we could only buy it for the wholesale network, and then you're subject to the laws of supply and demand, as well as the fact that books, due to their weight, are expensive to ship in bulk. In order to buy back as many as possible at the best price possible, we always tried to get the book lists from the Profs before buyback started. Unfortunately, many Profs can't be bothered to turn in the list until right before classes start, forcing us buy books from wherever we could at whatever the asking price was.
Third, college bookstores don't make all that much money from books. Most of the money, especially at the big-name campuses, comes from the merchandise. The book section is labor intensive, and you wind up losing a lot of money when books have to be returned to the publisher (store pays return shipping), from theft, and from Profs who do stupid things like asking us to order non-returnable custom printed packets of articles that cost the store $200 a piece, and then turn around and give the students free photocopies of the packets after they complain. For a class of 30?well, you can do the math and figure out how much the store took a bath on.
Yeah, students are getting screwed, but don't yell at the hapless guy behind the help counter or who?s working the buyback station. By all means, make do with the older editions or Indian copies. Also, here's a tip: If the Professor wrote the book, and it's not the principal text for the class, don't buy it unless it becomes clear you need it. Profs often require you to buy their book when they have no intention of using it. (We were once yelled at by a professor when he found we were selling used copies of his book. See, he doesn?t get royalties from used copies.)
This has been going on for years, and I bet if every college/university had an online newspaper publication you could find hundreds of related stories to this.
The story, as it goes with me -- personal experience -- If I ever drop a class, early in the semester after buying a book, I can rarely sell it back to my bookstore, due to a couple possible problems but most commonly they already have too many books of the same title in their used section. It is cool that many university bookstores often have a buy-back or a used section, but that generally only helps when you buy the book. You have a little bit of a chance to sell your book back, but not very likely.
You also always have to deal with the situation of when your professor changes books from semester to semester, and the only books available are brand new books, as opposed to 2 year old books (a good majority of classes/books will allow for well over 2 years, before any major changes take place that an old book can handle).
There is a student organization that is put together where you can actually barter/trade/sell/buy or whatever books you have with other students. This is probably the best idea that anyone has come up with as far as books go at my University.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
here is a link to a news story that came out yesterday on this very same topic. http://www.komotv.com/stories/29552.htm
Natural-Selection Be
I flunked college just fine without needing to buy a SINGLE text book.... tell me again where the problem is?
This would probably be a good point to provide a link to Richard Stallman's short story The Right to Read. Originally written in 1997, it's scarey how close it's getting to reality. If you haven't read it, please do so.
But the big profit item in bookstores is almost always sweatshirts and t-shirts and hats and all that junk.
...consisted of extensive hand-written notes that Professor Miller, a die hard classic professor at Clarkson University, wrote for use in my Calculus classes. It covered what you needed to know, and matched his lectures. Black and white, no companion CD, no word processor - everything was done by hand. Priceless. If only more teachers did the same.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
And how often did you have to retake Calculus?
Anyway I didn't resell my books. Not just for economic reasons, but I could use them for reference when I graduated and got out into the field.
rising cost of books ~ 45% over 5 years
nonused bells and wisthles bundled with books
new editions like clockwork
everybody but students should help lower cost for students.
Yeah i read the whole report, it's boring, sorry.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I got to Shawnee State in portsmouth Ohio.
My C programing book was 65$.
First day of class, I was zoned out and cruising amazon, and found it for 16$ shipped new, still in the wrapper.
Bought it, and took the old one back the bookstore for a refund. What really pisses me off, is that the bookstore wouldn't give me cash back, even though I payed with mostly cash. I used 10$, what was left in my student account from my loans, to help pay for books. They used this as a reason to just put the money back in my student account, which can only be used AT THE BOOKSTORE.
So, when I thought I saved myself 40$, I was only really digging myself in deeper.
Goddamned Con Artists.
Next Quarter I'm buying everything off Amazon.com or other sites. What really sucks is the only way to get the book list is from the bookstore, and you have to go down and argue with them, to get it. I'm not gonna be anywhere near as nice this time around.
I also hate buying clothing there. While its cool to wear a Shawnee State Hoodie, they want 50$ for one. FUCK THAT, "Steve and Barry's College Clothing Store" has all kinds of college's shirts and hoodies for 8$ a piece. Why is my schools so expensive? Hell, I'll buy a blank one and some iron on paper for my printer, and design my own custom one.
I go to school at University of Phoenix, using the online curriculum. We are given a choice between traditional textbooks and ebooks. The ebooks cost just as much as textbooks, and when the class ends, if you hadn't downloaded it, you no longer have access. I've taken to purchasing used books when possible.
it's called a Scanner and eMule. if every student did JUST ONE TEXTBOOK, well, that could save millions from this obviously needless and wasteful new calculus textbook problem! in case my html is messed up: http://www.pricewatch.com/1/6/1476-1.htm http://www.emule-project.net/
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
These sort of articles seem to come up every year (if not every semester). Yet so many go right back to the bookstore. I got my Data Structures book NEW for $13 dollars on half.com (though I won't tell my professor that ... he wrote the book!). At the bookstore it's $60. My $110 Computer Organization text for $55. On two textbooks alone I've already saved over $100.
;)
And if I can't get the newest edition (which usually means they changed some homework problems) I buy the older one and photocopy any assigned work from some poor schmuck who bought the new edition from the book store. After all, I'm copying it for personal, private academic study.
On another note, several students splitting the cost of a textbook is becoming more common as well. They all study together as it is, so when it comes time to do work it's not all that inconvenient to have to share a textbook in the library.
i failed my first year logic course primarily because i ran an outdated version of windows(dos shell/win3.1) without the propper java support to so much as open my logic textbook(it was on a CDROM)
worse still is that it has a key in it so that only one person can own the textbook, with only one email address, and so if you sell anyone else your "textbook" the only way this textbook is useful is if you also give them your email.
as i understand it, once you have a book, textbook or otherwise, once you understand the material, you can use the book to teach others. this is how the entire 'writing' technology has served us for millenia, and i don't like the way knowledge evaporates after awhile through some digital means.
language proof and logic, this means you.
here's a post i made near then on k5
yay lets replace a 500$ textbook set with a 3000$ computer every year! that'l save us lots of money!
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Edition churn is also terribly annoying. It's very common to do just enough revising to change the page and section numbers, then release a new edition. It means students can't use older editions unless the instructor is willing to give sets of readings and exercises for each.
I'm sure you'd also be surprised that the utter crap that gets published. The bad textbooks that get as far as being required for a course are the cream of the crop. My bookshelf is sagging with review copies of truly useless texts. I'm sure they all retail for $100+ too.
I suspect publishers are in for a shock over the long term. They are counting on the fact that University faculty members are pretty set in their ways and don't change--they'll keep using the same expensive books. I think sooner or later they'll notice that publishers are leeches on the system and stop using so many required texts. The publishers will then realize that professors are even less likely to change back. (Changing back means admitting you were wrong--they are never wrong.)
We can all dream.
Why don't people get organized, scan the texts with some sort of automated page-turning scanner (I know that universities have this sort of stuff), compress them, and upload them to P2P networks?
If you don't know what your textbooks are early enough to order overseas, buy your books from an online store like BookPool or ecampus.com, both of which are generally cheaper than Amazon for Computer Science texts.
I heard RMS speak on this once. He suggested that books could be written by professors (the best of the best professors).
Take chemistry for example. A professor could write one or two chapters on subjects that he/she specialize in and then another professor who specializes in another area could write a few chapters, etc. In the end, you'd have a world-class chemistry book written by the best of the best. And it would be easy for each contributor to keep the material up-to-date as they're only responsible for a few chapters at most. The textbook could be given away freely under the GNU license for documentation. This would allow professors who use the book in classes to add or remove material freely.
Call RMS crazy if you like, but models such as this work. Hell, look at GNU/Linux, it's built on this model... Hans Reiser does the best FS work in the world, the FSF provides compilers and libraries that are second to none, Linus Torvalds provides a top-notch kernel and it the end, we all benefit... why can't college textbooks be this way?
Some experiences I've had in the search for textbooks, from a student smack dab in the middle of their university career:
- I've sold several books directly to people in the bookstore. In all cases, I've simply been looking for my books (or in line to pay for them), and seen someone buying a book I own. Right there, I offer them my book at about 75% of the price, with delivery as soon as they want it - usually the next day we'll arrainge to meet and do the deal. Only once has this approach been rebuffed, and in that case, the person behind them bought it from me.
- Almost all my profs recommend getting older editions. In one case, we got a ten minute rant on the first day about how bad the new edition is, and how they're dumbing down everything in it. As such, the required text in one of my math classes is the sixth edition, whereas the most recent one is the nineth. They've been using this edition, however, for four or five years now, so there's a significant number of them in circulation.
- Most engineering courses have forgone textbooks and coursepacks, in favour of handouts and online PDFs. The standard EE class - the one that all EE/CompE/SoftE have to take at least once - no longer has a text, instead a series of (free) handouts from the prof and the TAs. Totaling three or four inches of paper, these could easily be a text in themself.
- Almost none of my friends in Arts use the bookstore for anything that's not a coursepack. Although those in themselves are ripoffs, most profs will put ten or so in the library. And almost all texts are on Amazon/Chapters for ~30% less.
In sum, profs know the textbook market is a racket, and understand. At least here at McG.
Cue The Sun...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For a significant number of English majors, I'm sure Project Gutenberg has made many trips to the campus bookstore unnecessary.
A textbook of mine was about $115 CAD this semester; I ordered a used copy from Powells for $12 USD; I included a few other books and got free shipping. It cost me $72 CAD for four books instead of $115 (plus tax) for one new one. To sum: Powells is wonderful, esp. for Canadians, as they charge GST at the source which doesn't hold up customs.
ABEBooks is another great place to shop - they're a collection of used booksellers across NA and Europe and as such usually have everything you could ever want. You really need to watch some booksellers on shipping - one seller in Cali wanted $15 USD for shipping on a book that should only cost $3-5 USD (media book rate int'l), for example, but if you're careful you can still save a bundle.
Finally, sometimes Amazon or Barnes & Noble or other large retailers have better prices than the uni's bookstore, important for when you absolutely need that 17th edition.
To put all this into perspective: if I had bought all my books new this semester at the local store, it would have cost about $350 CAD + 13% tax; as it was, using the above methods I spent about $125 CAD total.
One final note: to do this properly you need to talk to your future profs about a month and a half before the class starts (i.e. as soon as you're registered) to get a book list, as some booksellers can take longer than others, esp. if you need to order internationally. Keep in mind that big sellers (even powells) usually ships within 24 hours. Good luck! Hope this saves you all some cash!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
It's not just the textbooks. The whole College/University system is a self perpetuating racket. In reality, a college degree means nothing in most cases, but those who have one feel the need to validate their efforts, so they require one for any job they hire for.
So, You have to get a degree, which in most cases teaches you nothing you couldn't learn better through experience. This costs you at least 2 years of take-home pay, plus interest, and while you are there you get used at indentured servant rates by the university (called "work-study") to do what would otherwise cost them $40K/yr. You are generally taught by the people least qualified in the field, often by people who you can't understand the first word they say (Foreign Grad Students). The best engineers are working as engineers, the best businesspeople running companies, it is, by and large, the mediocrities who are teaching, with a few notable exceptions at the most prestigious of universities.
The whole system is a racket designed to benefit the administrators and faculty who, in most cases, are 1960's and '70s reject recycled hippies who have used the university as a place to hide all their lives.
The system is broken. We should replace "College" with a decent high-school system (a lot of what gets taught in College is remedial education on basic math, reading and writing, and hard science) and apprenticeships for most things. Universities are for advanced research, not a 4 year party. Think about it: if you spent what you spent on college on certifications and books, you'd have plenty left over for a few years world-trekking!
So, I guess you all know what I think of tax $$ being used to continue to subsidize College. I think it's a waste of money, and it would be better spent on vocational training, and fixing the K-12 system.
... I would start writing an open source economics or finance textbook. Anyone ever started a project like this?
oh man you're from concordia too!! yeah the two streets beside the Hall Building are full of copy shops, 15-20$ for most books. Without em I would've paid 400$ this semester. everybody does it.
For about a year now I have been thinking about putting together a webpage where students can offer and request text books within a single school. I'm sure the privately for-profit university bookstore would put a hit out on me.
I put off buying my botany lab manual until last night. It amounts to about 100 black and white 8.5x11 inch unbound pages for $55 plus tax. It hurts.
120 chars of filth!
On the bright side you can pretty much get away without textbooks once you get into grad school.
Maybe a book here and there but you'll end up spending alot more time reading research papers.
(Note: This may vary by major)
The last lockdown on Concordia seems to have succeeded. The copy place no longer sells last time I checked, and neither do the backup places I knew. However, though things are looking down, a lot of these places have phone numbers you can call behind the counter of people who sell books, if you ask properly.
Good luck with your pirating.
My latest textbook came with an activation disk for the software, which was _required_ to take any tests. It had you create a username, which was used. Of course, the teacher could not override this software, the university made her use it, and because of the requirement, they would not buy the books back, and you could not use used books.
It's bad enough with windows - my textbooks don't need activation.
As for me, I discovered the software used SQL queries, edited the string resources in the program so that it inserted a new activation code into the SQL DB, bought it for $5 used from a person who took the class (book and disk), and put the new code on the disk.
Pain in the rear, but it worked. I bought the book, the original author transfered all copies, so _I_ don't see a problem with it, regardless of what the courts would think (or the university).
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
I think thers is more than one of those places. The one I'm thinking of - and actually looking at, as I live across the street from it - is on Mackay, and charges fifteen bucks (last I heard) for anything you want. You bring in the course code (McG or Con) and they give you a nicely photocopied and bound edition of it. They also sell dirt-cheap computer components, which one imagines fell of the back of the proverbial truck. I've been in once, and they have a huge set up - tow or three of the industrial size printers running almost constantly.
As someone else metioned, I think there's also one in the Ghetto, on Parc - to cater for the people who refuse to leave the McG area.
While we're alll mentioning Montreal places, I can imagine these types of operations exist in all towns with a certain percentage of University students. Part of the underground university-based economy.
Cue The Sun...
I had a class where we were REQUIRED to buy 3 books.. two textbooks and a lab book.. one of the textbooks was never touched. Pissed away $75 for that band book
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
The study states that PAPER and INK are big parts of the cost of the books. With books at $100, that's just not the case. The real cost are profits and royalties.
Electronic textbooks will not lower the cost of books, and they don't have pretty pictures.
Sounds like someone with an older edition of the text wanting the password went into the bookstore, took the password, and used it.
That reminds me that when I got my Bachelor's at McGill, it cost me $638 per YEAR tuition (1976). Now I'm doing a Master's at SUNY-Stony Brook, and last fall I spent approximately the same just for the first term textbooks.
Calculus texts must be the paradigmatic rip-off.
I remember being particularly annoyed with my first-year Calculus text since we only got through half the book in the year, it was a new book so there were no used copies available in Montreal, and the next year, the company issued it as two separate softcover volumes for about a quarter of the price each, so we couldn't even get a good price for ours. Damn them.
With many of my professors, I get the feeling that it's the University that requires the updated texts. My profs could care less if we had a new book or not: especially the older instuctors.
In my experience (bio), professors know the material they want to teach, and any text is merely a teaching aid. In fact, by the end of the term, I'll have 50 pages of photocopies that were much more relevant to the class subject matter than any text. Based off that occurance I choose to either forgo the purchase a text or simply buy a used or old edition for 1/3 the price.
I guess what it boils down to is this: who's teaching the classes? The text or the instructor?
I take civil engineering. At the undergraduate level, the majority of the basic information doesn't change. Average stress is always going to be the net force divided by the cross sectional area. Just like everyone else though, we get new editions every year. In most cases, the only thing that has been changed, are the numbering of the problems. Since the prof gets the newest version free (for "review", or whatever garbage reason they have), they always assign homework on the new numbering. It sucks getting a zero, just because the question numbers are wrong. (Hasn't happened to me, but I've seen it done before.)
The bookstore itself is a massive rip off as well. A lot of the books for the 3rd and 4th year courses are design guides; industry standard books, typically published by Civil Engineering Associations. These groups usually give a (substantial) student discount. The bookstore, on the other hand, charges full rates. Guess who pockets the 50% difference on a $130 textbook. One of our profs took to pre-ordering textbooks through our Civil Engineering Club; he was even one of the authors. Too bad the rest of the administration is full of greedy bastards.
...to being a liberal arts junior. Once you get to upper level classes, there are no textbooks to buy, only a few case studies and so forth. I'm a history major and I spent less than $200 on books for a 15-credit semester. Obviously the IT majors are probably going to have to keep dishing out a lot of money for textbooks, but good liberal arts profs don't use them at upper levels. Fortunately, for me...
I went to college in Europe (Switzerland, Ph.D in France) and you could essentially go through the entire curriculum without buying even one book. There were no official "course Textbooks", instead each faculty wrote lecture notes, problem sets, and solutions, which were mimeographed and either given away, or sold at cost by the university.
These notes were simpler to absorb because they addressed neither more nor less than the actual course syllabus. Of course they'd recomment additional references that you could buy (I certainly did sometimes), but definitely didn't have to. Thus students could save their money for what's of interest to them -- and that also made publishers compete under much healthier rules.
That was a few years ago. Recently, unfortunately, it seems that the trend for "Textbooks" is slowly taking over Europe as well. And I can't help but feel for the students I see lugging 600+ page hard covers, of which the actual course uses maybe 25%.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Why hasn't someone reported this blatantly anti-competitive behavior to someone like the DOJ or FTC (who would apply here?). This seems like a blatant violation of federal law.
I used to teach at the local community college for a while. I recommended that they switch to python from qbasic. They said ok, so what about the text. I showed them http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/. Well, they bit and they are using it. The text is $17.00 hardcopy or free on the web. $17.00 is very reasonable.
$76 for a calc book, then the book store offers 75 CENTS for the used book at the end of the term (half semester) because the teacher changed his mind AGAIN about what book to use.
I saw a girl trade in 3 books, probably cost her over $200, and got about $3 in return. The guy running the buy-back table suggested she "buy a candy bar or something."
Luckily for me, I was dating a girl at the bookstore. When the teacher placed an order for the hardcover version of Applied Cryptography for around $95 each she ordered me a paperback copy for under $40.
Of course, that book became the one book I wished was hardcover as it was actually fun to read and I used it again and again, but that's not the point.
The point is, that when every single student gave her grief about the price, she said the same thing every time: the book store has no control over any of the prices, or choices. The teacher gives them an order number and they order it. The company gives them the price they buy back books at.
If the teacher would just choose the same book every year then used books would be worth something and the bookstore would store them instead of selling them back. If the teacher chose a softcover or unbundled book, or even looked at the price before ordering (I once saw a pocket-sized handbook on fire protection engineering for $200!!!) this wouldn't be such a problem.
[/rant]
I'm a CS major at UT Dallas and I use half.com for a lot of my book purchasing. Also, for required non-CS classes (like government, history, english, etc..), I'll never write in the textbooks and keep them in good condition, and then sell them on half.com. I recently sold my $60 history book for $50. I win, the buyer wins. You can also get a lot of your textbooks on there really cheap, and if not, at least at a discount.
Also, for books you don't care about, look for softcover editions (physics, math, and CS books are usually hardback). As long as you can keep them in good condition, they'll last just as long as hardback books.
As for my core CS classes, I'll end up keeping those books because I use them and I'm sure I'll use them in the future.
-Vic
Speaking from first-hand experience, I just finished coauthoring a textbook on a fast-moving high-tech topic. In this instance (as opposed to say, Calculus), new editions are not only justified, but necessary, since the information in the textbook becomes stale very quickly (a matter of 2-3 years in my case).
Furthermore, you shouldn't hold the professors or authors in contempt--we make a pittance. It's the publishers and bookstores that are making a killing. As coauthor, I make $4 of royalty for every copy that the bookstore sells for $85. The total royalty, even for a class of 30 or so students (typical in this subject area at my university), amounts to nothing more than peanuts. Furthermore, we have a textbook selection policy that requires an independent committee to select the book. Of course, I can't comment on other universities, but my university is a major midwestern state university which may or may not have typical policies regarding textbook selection.
Finally, given the amount of effort I have put into this book, it will never pay off financially. It would make more sense for me to spend my time flipping burgers at McDonalds. I think of it as charity, to improve the educational experience of the students that use it.
This week, Half.com ran an ad in my college's paper (the creatively named "Collegian") advertising its low textbook rates.
You should be on Hee-Haw! *the crowd laughs like retards*
is copyright. If it wasn't for copyright, an artifically created monopoly, there would be no way that publishers could keep the prices of books so high. If they insisted on asking for so much money, professors or students could scan the book into a computer and offer it online as a website.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Also, I doubt book publishers want to seriously deal with the threat of a textbook napster
Too late. A friend of mine managed to collect about 6 gigabytes of electronic books (comp sci, math, electrical engineering, etc). The stuff is out there.
At my school, it's no different as far as textbook prices go, but my profs are quite good in that they never require the students to get the textbooks... They are instead listed as recommended reading in certain sections. As a bonus, there are usually a couple of copies on reserve at the library so we don't have to buy them.
Koreth, your name sounds familiar. When did you go to UCSC?
red floyd
Proud Slug, Crown '84.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
just catch hold of an indian student, and ask em to bring back the books. save at least 50 times the cost, eh? :P
I had a really poor friend in Acoustic Engineering. We "borrowed" a book from the store and paid him to photocopy it for all of us, his copy of course was free.
Normally I bought books, but $80 for a book from the 1950s?!?!?! Just about every example in it had to do with WWII aircraft communications. The teacher *claimed* that was the source of most acoustic research.
One lecturer I had set a text for one final year subject, and later found that it was only available in a hardcover version that year for well over twice the reasonably high price he had paid for it the previous year. He knew the author, and knew that sales were never going to reach the point where the author would get a single extra cent - the publisher was screwing both the author and the limited readership. The solution to this was to make twenty-five copies and hand them out. The rest of the set texts were journal articles.
Students have complained, and God knows why the college hasn't fixed their policy. They're normally so wise with money, and they don't overcharge for anything else (except the food, which they should pay us to eat).
As the owner and operator of a small college bookstore in the U.S., I can tell you that customer service is at the top of my list as long as I will not lose money in the long run on the endevor.
I know that the impression of "Gouging" in the eyes of the student (whether true or not) sours students away from my store - usually permanently. News of honest and fair customer service travels fast; news of gouging and dishonest/unfair business practice travels even faster.
For example, students who buy a defective book in any shape or form (as long as they bought it from my store, and are not trying to pass off on me an on-line purchased book; that's why they have to have a receipt) will typically get an exchange with little or no questions asked.
I agree with you completely on the sentimnt of "gouging." When selling back used textbooks, I usually find it best in the long run to give students the information they need to make an informed decision. When your college bookstore offered you $16.00 for a $120.00 textbook it was probably because of one of two circumstances:
1) the book was not on course for the following term (no demand for the book at your school)
or
2) the bookstore already had as many copies of your book as it needed for the following term, so they weren't going to buy a book at an on-course value when the likihood of selling your book to another student is low. If they don't sell your book to a student next term, they can't return it to you later - so they won't assume the risk.
When a book is not "on-course" most college stores (including mine) typically sell these "wholesale" books to a wholesaler (in my case MBS, Missouri Book Services). The wholesaler pays us what we pay you, plus a 20% commission on the sale. So in your case, we would have made $3.20 on the sale of your book. Your book then sits in a very large warehouse until another college bookstore calls them up and says "We need book X" (your book) and they sell it at a profit to that store, which sells it as a used book.
I can tell you that at my bookstore if your book was "on-course" you would have gotten 1/2 the new value (in this case $60.00) and we would have re-sold it for $90.00 used (25% off the new price), regardless of whether you had bought the book new or used. The ideal scenario for me is to buy back books at their "on-course" value because we make money and the student is happy with the good compensation. Unfortunately this is not common because books are usually not "on-course" (though they tend to be more often at larger schools because of frequently repeating/rotating classes).
It is true that no bookstore will knowingly buy back a book that has gone into a new edition (or will soon be doing so). No bookstore that wants to stay in business for long will buy a book they can't sell again, and you're right to be put-off by the fact that new editions come out so frequently. Publishers do this to thwart the used-book market, which you wanted to take part in (and yes, I know frequent new editions do annoy just about everyone except the publishers).
You certainly did the right thing to sell it on your own for $50.00 This is, in fact what we will recommend to students who have an on-course book that we already have enough of.
Although this kind of direct re-selling thing hurts my business I would be *very* reluctant to complain about it because of the tremendous negative impact it would have on the goodwill I need with the student body and the college community to stay in business. Students like you are, in my opinion, reacting to textbook (and higher-ed tuition) pricing that is increasing at a pace that exceeds that of other commodities in society. College Tution costs so much nowadays that after students like yourself are done paying tuition (or, more likely, taking out yet-another-college-loan), they have less and less patience each year for the cost of textbooks and bookstore explinations for them, whether the explination is legitimate or not.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
there is an awfully well-known scheme the publishing houses use to sell books. The schools can't do anything about it, anyway. Here's how it works:
1) Publish a new edition of your textbook at least every couple of years. Be sure to change the page numbering significantly, and ideally, move stuff from chapter to chapter. The harder it is to syncronize with the old edition, the better!
2) Release it as soon as you're almost sold out of the previous edition.
3) Laugh as bookstores can no longer carry new copies of the old edition, so professors have to require the new edition -- they can't assume that everyone will be able to find a used copy of the old edition, and it'll take way too much of their time to synchronize teaching from both editions.
4) Rinse, Repeat
5) PROFIT!
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What is even More Annoying is the poor quality of many textbooks when they are considered simply as manufactured physical objects (irrespective of their content). Weak bindings (or worse "pseudo-bindings) poor quality paper, so-called hardcover books that are simply paperbacks with stiff covers.... for these prices, the books could at least be made to LAST! (Re-sale is not the issue, I have retained most of my textbooks since high school as references, and still consult them from tome to time...)
Here are some links I dredged up last time this subject rolled through.
Wiki Textbooks
Light and Matter: Open physics textbooks.
An open math textbook
Project Gutenberg, for all the English majors out there.
There are also a lot of books out there which are freely downloadable, but not modifiable. Has anyone here used a free (in either sense) textbook as their primary learning tool in a college class? If so, what was your experience?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Bullshit. I have a smallish 120 page math text sitting on my bookshelf that I paid almost $130 for. It is completely black and white, and has very few illustrations. Textbooks cost $90 - $150 each because the publishers aren't sure if they can get away with charging $190 - $250.
You probably have no idea how right you are. I know a couple of folks who used to work for a subsidiary of Times-Mirror Corporation. At a meeting of technical leads in the mid/late '90s the discussion from the subsidiary that published college text books was how to leverage technologies such as SGML/XML to create the ability for profs to customize the content of the text book they used in class each year. The motivation for this was not to allow the prof to select the best content for the course (this was just the marketing angle) but to destroy the market for used text books.
I can just hear a prof saying something like, "Oh, by the way, don't buy a used copy of the text for this class. The content has changed significantly from last year."
Time-Mirror got bought by Tribune Corporation a couple of years ago. Tribune sold off the subsidiaries that didn't fit with their core identity of news media so I have no idea where that particular subsidiary ended up. My guess is it doesn't matter. On the other hand, I know of at least one prof who required his own text book and then refunded to the class what he made on them buying it. Some people are fair but don't count on it.
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Hey students, nobody is forcing you to buy the expensive books. If you really need the book so badly then make a friend in class and ask to borrow their book for the day. Take it to the library and photocopy every page you think you will need. Check the syllabus, you probably wont even need to photocopy half the book, but even if you had to photocopy 400 pages it would still be 60% cheaper than buying it. I know people who got through gradschool with this method and they never bought any books.
Or you can just do what I did: don't buy the books. If the professor gives good notes then just pay attention in class. If you need to study from the book then do it at Barne's and Noble. If you see that only 2 chapters of a book are going to be used in a class (check syllabus or talk to prof) then you have no one but yourself to blame for buying it. You are stupid!
Publishers experimenting with text e-books want to lease you access to the information.
If they have their way you will still pay a large sum, but at the end of the semester they cut of your access to that book/information.
No thanks
Steve
I work for a professor(not as a student). I get all sorts of totally great textbooks for free. The publishers send him tons of books trying to get him to use them, and he gives them to me. I'm not sure what the karma factor is here since I reap the benefits of everyone else's high prices...
...How many pages can you copy before it doesn't count as 'fair use' anymore? ;)
This friend run an FTP? ^_^
Where I go to school, at the University of Waterloo, we have a thriving used bookstore which is a member of the university's retail services. Its in a prominant location in our Student Life Center, and is larger that most mall bookstores you walk into.
It sells books for a much more reasonable price (1/2 price or so for good condition) and most of that money is given to the student who gave the book when it sells. All in all, it is one of the better systems that I have seen, the only problem is that sometimes it can be difficult to find the book you're looking for because it has either sold out, or the textbook publishers have changed the edition again.
This is not a sig.
Although it sounds like a racket, I have been told that professors don't get royalties for books sold at their own universities. This is to prevent the abuse that you just mentioned, which although cynical, is not true.
Professors don't care. In fact in some cases they are paid to select the more expensive of two options by bookstores who offer them a kickback based on a percentage of the sales.
Perhaps it is because I have a positive view of academia but I have had a good number of professors who said (paraphrasing): I was thinking about book X but it was too expensive at $100 so I went with book Y at a more reasonable $50. Don't get me wrong, they could go out of their way to make it really cheap for us students by doing something like you suggested. So you can look at this two ways.
Lastly, professors in the sciences only want to write two kinds of books (I know I'm generalizing):
Too bad it took a college graduate to realize that "textbook prices are artificially inflated".. I think just about everyone else noticed this the first day they were a freshman.
Solutions: photocopiers, pdfs, page -> pdf scanning equipment, asking the prof if you really need the book, library reserve systems, theft, etc...
Well, the blue-card program will get rid of most of the unskilled jobs in the USA, so yes, we are.
The university I went to (the University of Wisconsin - Stout) had a great system. A small fee was added to tuition on a per credit basis. This money was used to fund a textbook rental program. At the beginning of a semester, you would go pick up the books you needed. At the end you return them. If you really liked the book and wanted to keep it, they would sell it to you. When they quit using a book, they would sell it for cheap. The system seem to work great.
When I went to the U of MN, one of my teachers (I think he was compsci, can't remember for sure), required us to have this photocopied packet for his class. Just a bunch of shit he threw together, maybe 50-75 pages. Except, the bastard charged $25 for it, and told us if he caught anyone photocopying it for others, they would be booted from the class. $25 times ~300 students, that's around $7500 he was raking in for each class every quarter. Keep in mind he did the same thing for his other classes throughout the day. Several people dropped the class and complained, I stayed in the class and pooled my money with about 20 others and got the packet for just over $1 and copied the thing.
:)
Why don't pissed off students use a cheap $60 scanner and the computer their parents bought them and scan their books into pdf format and then distribute them over bittorrent, kazaa, favorite p2p app? Had scanners been this cheap and p2p so prevalent when I went to school, that's what I would have done in an effort to wave my middle finger at the man.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
"This is just another side effect of a copyright society."
Well we all have our pet issues, don't we?
" Although copyrights alledgely promote the creation of works, does not mean they promote the dissimation of usefull works."
Econ-101
Most creations are done for profit. Wider dissimination means more customers and greater profit. Usefulness is an entirely seperate issue from copyright.
"Alot of people think that cheap tabloids that are pennies on the page, and expensive text books that are pages on the dollar is just another aspect of a free market society, along with the hype over substance that goes with - but it is not."
Since it's "content" that people are paying for, yes it is.
"Copyrights are not free market because they are not about freedom, they are about controll."
So's gravity. Anyway your "free market" sounds more like "market of anarchy", while the one we have in civilized society is all about freedom within the boundaries of a framework of rules. Maybe your inner rebel doesn't like living with rules? But that's the way it is, and I dare you to suggest something that's better.
"One of these days people will learn that just because an institution calls somthing a right, does not mean that it is."
And maybe people will learn that because someone says that something doesn't apply to them doesn't mean they're exempt (try that gravity thing on top of a skyscraper)
"The sooner we learn that with copyrights the better - especially in the information age where the only way to differentiate free speech content from copyright content is to appoint people to censor it."
[Label:This is free speech content]
Damn that was hard.
is it true they don't allow any form of calculator near a math class...even Calculous!!!
You don't need a calculator for calculus... The meat of the work is all symbolic, any work with real numbers is just busywork. Of course it's a lot easier to grade if you can just look for a specific number at the end.
Think of it this way, a a major univerfsity decides "no way are we gonna charge our students $120 for a new textbook, we'll just get an older edition" but when they head to the publisher to buy the old edition, there are none to be had (shocking!) so they are stuck paying ridiculous sums for the books, and must charge students more to cover the costs. Now, there should be stockpiles of old editions SOMEWHERE, but I doubt that universities are going to want to deal with Crazy Eddie's used book and alternative fuel emporium each year, seeing as it might not be possible to get enough books for the students who enroll. this problem is exacerbated by the students who get their textbooks elsewhere, leaving the universities with leftover stock.
I'm not saying I'm all for the gouging, I'm saying it's possible to understand the universities' dilemma, and perhaps they don't want to charge retardulous prices, but they need to have their bases covered.
yay for philosophy! no books needed!
Lately we've been using PDF texts at my university. Real text books have become a total rip off.
:(
In order to make a buck, publishers and bookstores have been dealing with tons of "revised" versions of text books. One year a class will use a new text book, however at the end of the year you'll find that you can't sell your book back to the bookstore.
Why? Well the publisher decided to release an updated version, with a fixed typo, and a new cover. The book will be, more or less, -exactly- the same. Nevertheless, the campus bookstore will pick up the new book because forcing people to buy a new version pulls in more money then buying and selling used text books >:(
Moreover, a lot of publishers have also been ripping-off students with CD-ROMs. Lots of new books get marked up because they come with a CD-ROM. Yet, It's not uncommon for the CD-ROM to simply be a cheep-ass compilation of PDF, HTML, or MS word documents that were represented as text in the actual book. "Save for Web...", burn to CD >:|
AND, it can get WORSE! Sometimes publishers combine both of the above rip-off tactics. They'll rerelease a new version of a book, and the new version will be EXACTLY the same as the old one. Yet, this time someone will hit "Save to Web.." in InDesign or Quark, save a digital duplicate of the book to a CD-ROM, repackage the book, and raise the price to reflect the new "digital" content! Soulless Mother F***ers!!!
Now, combine that bullshit, with the fact that professors have to PAY to use the faculty copy machine, and you'll understand why we use PDF documents now.
It's sad
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Check out www.firstandsecond.com. Search for Special Low-Priced Indian Edition, and get really really cheap books. C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup for Rs. 600 + 1000 for shipping. That's almost $35. Amazon has it for $57. Buying more books, will get you more savings.
I was thinking about this issue for a while yesterday. I'm teach math at a state university, and have a hard time justifying the cost of calculus texbooks. Other math subjects, with a signifcantly smaller market, I don't really mind the cost of books so much. Those book aren't the ones with a new edition every year anyways.
I've seen the idea of "open source" textbooks mentioned here before. I've always though that a calculus book would be an optimal test bed for the open and collaboratively written textbooks. Calculus has not changed in a long time, and it's not going to. Also, lots of college students have to take calculus. There a number of people who understand the subject thoroughly enough to write about it.
Writting the book would be a lot of work. Publishing is also a large dilemma. Certainly printing the pages and binding them is more difficult that compiling code. Many large universities have their own presses, which is a start. You could distribute a PDF of the book for free. I'm sure enterprising copy shops around campus could print and bind it for a fee much smaller than what current publishers charge. I have some other idea for publishing as well.
There are other difficulties to be addressed. One is academic advancement, and how work on this project would affect it. Others are logistical, but there are other collaborative process to look to answers for. I'd be interested in what people thought about the merits of this idea. Certainly I'd be interested in discussing this idea further.
Two possibilities (I have used both successfully):
1) Order your books at the local Barnes & Noble and use your discount card (if you have one; I love them). I prefer to see the books I buy, so this is the method I use now.
2) Order your books on-line, preferably from Canada or the UK, as they are much cheaper this way, even with the shipping costs added.
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
Textbooks are just far too expensive and most of the time you're not really getting your money's worth out of them, at least that's how I feel. It appears as though my particular University has some deals with some publishers, such as Addison-Wesley, and get all their programming textbooks from them. As a result, Java Software Solutions is the standard book. Personally I found this particular book to be extremely useless... While other books like O'Reilly's Learning Java, and Head First Java books offered much more content, and were both CHEAPER in price. I've since opted to avoid buying the school's textbooks whenever possible.
The money spent on these textbooks could be used for much more worthwhile things.
I actually bought bootlegged photocopied textbooks this semester. Knowing full well that the content of these books (in terms of learning potential) is quite small, but needing to rely on them anyway for the sake of excersizes and problems that need to be done for assignments. Net savings: $165. Where did this money go? I attended an Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference where I learned lots of interesting things from such speakers as Joel Spolsky. The rest of the money when towards paying off my credit card for... you guessed it, more textbooks... and tuition.
The gouging goes on at high school level too. At my school, there was a group of students who all had their pre-calc textbook stolen out their locker along with serveral other items. They could not find the theif, so the students had to pay. The school district said "The catalogs we have from the publisher say that book cost about $50" The students I know did pay the 50 dollars were told after the order went in that the price has changed and now is $80. The parents were furious and they managed to find the book online for $40 and actually at the price, the district was able to pay for the replacements.
These books aren't mass produced like novels and the latest biographys, there's limited demand, and as you get more specialised the prices go up since there is less demand. Grow up, get your books and study for a change rather than moaning on here!
I went out this week and bought a textbook on Neural Networks costing me 16.50 ($25 US at a guess). I see this as small cost compared to tuition fees. This book was written by the course lecturer and he even said he didn't mind us copying since his royalty was very small.
I thought in the US it cost lots more to go to a good uni, so even if the cost of books is more, come on! If you spend thousands a year on a degree don't gripe about spending a couple of hundred on books, we all knew before we started we'd need them.
At my University, they are going insane with the added charges. Info tech fee(means that I can use there computers, BUT I have to pay for anything I print out seperate), Id card activation fee, Union Building Fee(this one really urks me, It is open to the public for free but if you are a student you have to pay for it?!?!?!), student account fee(means I can get email for a $100, how about a FREE hotmail account instead?) medical fees, parking decal fee.etc..etc.
This is on top of the HIGH tuition and the INSANE price of books(It is true, last semester I didn't have a single book under a $100).
These books cost about $15, and there about 400 pages. Easily adequate for an intro course.
Why can't these books be used, at least at the community college level?
Actually, there are a lot standard bookstore type books which could be used for a lot of standard courses.
I don't understand why colleges don't use them.
The simple solution is to take a vacation in India and buy all your text books cheap. Indian editions (in many case printed by the same publishing houses as in America) are rarely over $8-$10. A round trip air ticket would cost $800-$1000 and food/accomodation would be atmost $100-$150 per week. You'll get a nice couple of weeks of vacation and a year long supply of your text books.
I've always asked my professor the first day of class if we need the textbook listed on the syllabus before buying it. At least 40% of the time they would say it's good to have, but not absolutely necessary. Or often they would say they hand out their own notes, and you don't need the text book, but official you "have" to buy it, which I didn't.
A while back, /. posted a story about a set of Medical School books being sold on CD-ROM. IIRC, you also had to buy the book reader, or the software, to go with it and the CD-ROM "expired" after three years. Their owners could not read the CD-ROM's after the "expiration." Putting books in electronic form will simply create new forms of ripoffs.
One of my students just got back from a visit to India. While there, he visited the Indian Institute of Technology and went shopping in the bookstore. He brought back some really excellent engineering texts which he got for about a twentieth of the price they would be over here.
The textbook publishers remind me a lot of the RIAA. I suspect that the marketing is the most expensive part of producing a textbook. There was a while when I was teaching quite small classes that I probably got more free text books for review than my students bought.
Part of the problem is that the market for most textbooks is quite small and the number of titles is also quite limited. I have been using one particular text for a few years just because it is the least bad one that I can find!
I have tried teaching courses without using a text using lots of photocopies and URLs but that doesn't work well for most students. Lots of worked examples and problems are really necessary, even in grad school. (One of my buddies, a mere engineer, took a class meant for mathies. He was able to pass it by working through every example and problem in the textbook.)
Textbooks are necessary. Some of them are a ripoff and others it's hard to see how they can sell them at a profit. For something like a first year calculus text, of which many thousand can be sold, there is no excuse for charging more than fifty bucks! (or three in India) There hasn't been a sit-in or demonstration here in many years but this seems to be a clear case where some kind of action might actually get results.
I'm sorry, but I have only an imperfect understanding of this. Maybe it will ring a bell with someone out there who can explain it better.
In the US, sometime during the Reagan administration I believe, the tax code was changed, and this directly affected publishing companies in how they could depreciate inventory. If I remember correctly, publishers used to be able to print a large edition, warehouse the books for years, and write a part of that inventory off on their taxes.
From my understanding, the tax code changed so that it became far more expensive for publishing companies to warehouse books -- they couldn't enjoy the write offs they once could.
The result is, publishing houses print smaller editions, and come out with newer editions more frequently. These smaller printings are more expensive. This raises the price of books, and pressures schools to use the newest editions -- driving down the value of used books.
Who wins and who loses?
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I refuse to purchase anything from our campus bookstore.
I've never paid more than $40 for a book on half.com. My stuff usually runs around $20 there.
The school bookstore charges $115-160 for the same stuff.
F Them.
I took a calculus 2 class in florida and had to buy this thick ass book for like 120 bucks. Which covered Calc 1,2,3. When I moved to massachusetts and took 3d calc, they wanted me to buy this newer edition book, which was only calc 3, but exactly the same as the last part of my older book. I chose to just do the homework with the book I had, not one of the problems were different from the newer edition.
By the way, anyone want to buy a calc book?
Mark
Forget about corporations gouging people for a minute and look at what is happening to helpless college students nationwide.
.deviatefromtheabsolute.
I went to the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. You just check the books out at the start of the semester, and turn them back in at the end. I have no idea why every university doesn't do this. Maybe that was incentive to get students to go to that hella-cold part of the country.
At least you don't have to buy the french equivalent at 3/2 times the price like i do.
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
well...
...
:-)
i know i may get flamed for this...ergo "A.C"
during my engineering college days , we had shops that sold out pre-xeroxed ( i know..xeroxed! ) books that were required in that semester for 1/3rd the price...or less
really...nobody could afford the books at the original price and the photocopy shops made a killing at this..
I guess in another 3 years we wouldnt need that as we would have e-books everywhere...
somebodys sitting on a gold mine and doesnt know it !
-p
afterthought : I am not from the US or Europe
I'm not certain what your complaint is, except you didn't get what you felt you should for your book. When companies practice "buy low, sell high" it's some kind of conspiracy. When individuals do it it's a good thing. Remember business:=make profit. Now how is the bookstore going to make a profit if they payed what the seller demanded, and sold at cost or lower (everyone wants "cheap" right?) I think the whole "/." cabel simply needs to get out in the real world and try to start their own business. Some will succeed, but I'm willing to bet that the majority will fail. I let the failures be "ask slashdot's"
My school's campus bookstore is actually pretty reasonable for textbooks. It's online listings show their price as well as the price at Amazon.ca and Chapters.ca, and a link to the library's database entry for it. Generally books are cheaper at our bookstore than online (without taking shipping into account).
Furthermore, many of our courses have custom "course notes" that basically cover in detail everything we're doing, and they tend to only cost $5-15 (CAD).
Of course, it helps that our bookstore is owned by our Engineering Society -- it's non-profit.
A huge list of math texts.
David MacKay has posted his book Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms on his website. (This is despite it being a recently published work available through major bookstores.)
The classic, Numerical Recipes in C, is available online for free.
Some more math texts.
Another grab bag of online texts (mostly math).
Yet even more math and CS stuff.
I had an micro-controller course in which the Prof. wanted the students to build their own development kits based on the PIC. The prof. designed his own kit and had a custom circuit board made and a set of parts put together which he had some TAs package into zip locks. He wanted to sell them directly to the students for the cost of the parts, however this is against university policy, so he HAD to sell them to the students through the university bookstore which is a non-profit. The bookstore tacked on a 20% handling fee for the packages! The prof. was not happy with the way the store gouged its students and decided that his course did NOT need a text book and instead wrote his own course work which he made free copies for the students.
My aunt was a text book editor and the reasons for frequent editions is pure greed. The mark up on text books is sky high and publishers make money hand over fist one them. New editions keep the cash flowing in.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I suppose the text book publishers would try quite hard to prevent these from being used. "Oh, your school district is going to use the public-domain trigonometry textbook? Well, I'm afraid we can't give you the usual 12% discount on your purchase of organic chemistry textbooks."
Richard Feynman wrote in his autobiography "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" a story about his participation in textbook selection in California high schools, in which the publisher got the committee to approve a book before the content was even available to review.
"Surely..." also gives one example of the serious problems with content he found in most textbooks.
Bet they were complete though. I bought a book or two that were missing entire sections. the table of contents said one thing. the contents said different. And yes they were sold that way (all of them). Scam indeed.
I worked in a community college bookstore for five years. I ran the textbook department. Every semester I dealt with over 800 titles, with about half of them changing from semester to semester. We were an institutional store, meaning we were owned by the college, however we were treated like any other business on campus. We paid rent, payroll and any all the other expenses, and got nothing from the general fund.
I don't know how many of you know much about retail or the book industry, so I'll try to lay it all out. Regular books have preprinted prices, and bookstores are given a discount from the cover price. In most cases this discount is 45-50%. Textbooks are usually sold for a set price, with no suggested retail, and it is up to the bookstore to decide how much they want charge.
The industry standard margin is 25%. This means that if I was charged $75 for a book, I would sell it to the students for $100 dollars. Out of this $25 dollars I would need to pay for all my expenses: shipping, payroll, rent, etc. In my bookstore, we broke even. Usually we lost a couple grand a semester selling textbooks. We did it because it was our job, not because there was any money in it.
It is typically the authors and publishers who profit from textbooks. They can justify the high cost by giving free materials to instructors. These instructional materials are basically bribes, as many instructors take the free textbooks they get from publishers, and sell them off for cash. I have always viewed this as an unethical practice.
As far as the used book trade goes, the prices paid for books is based on supply and demand. Most used books are handled by wholesalers who buy and sell books as a form of speculation. Most schools don't run their own buybacks, they have a wholesaler come in and buy books for them. Typically, any books that get bought for immediate resale by the bookstore will get top dollar (50% of retail), any other books however will be bought at a wholesale value (10-20% of retail). This is due to the fact that the wholesaler is gambling that they will be able to sell these books to another school before they become worthless.
This is all exasperated by the marketing practices of the publishers, who want to kill the used book trade anywhere they can. They convince the instructors to choose books in complex package sets that include software and workbooks. Since the software EULAs prevent it from being resold, and workbooks get used up, then the bookstore can't offer used versions of these packages and students are forced to buy new.
I used to go to trade shows every year where some company would claim to have the perfect DRM for ebooks. Textbook publishers aren't going to let ebooks happen unless they get to make as much money as they do now. That is plain and simple.
In the long run, I left the industry. It nearly killed me with stress. Everyone blamed me for the price of books, yet there were groundskeepers on campus that were paid more than me. It just wasn't worth it.
I believe that if you want textbook prices to come down, then instructors need to make their decisions based on price and value. Many instructors have no idea how much their books are going to cost the student, and some just don't care. Instructors are the only people who can apply real pressure to the publishers, since they are the ones that decide which books get used. The bookstores are just middle-men. They don't really have much say in the process.
Forgive me for my ramble, and understand that this is a simplified version, where I have left out many smaller issues. For more information you may want to check out NACS.org. They have a lot of useful resources on their site, including a chart that breaks down exactly where the textbook dollar goes.
My two dollars worth.
Christian
I worked for 7 years for a major publisher. The report says: "paper, printing and editorial costs account for an average of 32.3 cents of every dollar of the textbook cost".
Okay, so it's the printing, right? WRONG.
"Paper, Printing, & Binding" (PP&B) is anywhere from 4-8 bucks for your typical "real" textbook. Calculus, Chemistry, Finance.
Editorial is usually $20k per book, and most of that comes out of the author's royalties - the better the book, the less editorial needed.
I remember the numbers for one book in particular. PP&B was ~$4.50. Retail was something around 65 bucks. We sold it for 40. That covered the PP&B (which is JUST the cost of the physical item. The marginal cost), plus my salary, company profit, etc. The three big reasons books cost?
(1) Bookstores. That $40 book cost you $60 because of the bookstore. All they did is have it. Nice gig.
(2) Professors/Ancillaries. You would not BELIEVE the stuff we make for the professors. Transparency sets ($300 for one set). Software. Testbanks. Grading testbanks. Teacher's manuals. If you had all the stuff we provide for professors, anyone could teach the course. And all of that has to be paid for by you, the students.
(3) Indirect market. Just like your doctor, your professor doesn't know (or care) how much the book costs. It's what he likes. (One professor adopted a book solely because the cover was "his school's" color)
So, make the prof happy, no matter what it takes or costs. And this is why books cost so much.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
After my first semester in college I stopped buying books. I was lucky enough that many of my classes were tought from course notes developed especially for the class, and when I needed to get the homework exercise from the book there was always a friend around. ;)
I don't see why there couldn't be a free (as in software) text for subjects like calculus. It's not as if the subject changes so much that it needs to be updated every year or two!
I agree, wikimedia (makers of wikipedia) have online free, as in freedom, text books. Why not use free text books that have been created by a collaboritve effort by the best minds?
The link like the parent said is here:
http://wikibooks.org/
And of course there's the old uncertainty principle that you can't know how much a physics textbook costs and whether it's in stock at the bookstore at the same time.
Preach on, brotha!!!
perhaps like most other things market driven, people will hopefully become smart enough to focus on education and see that crap like this is a fraudulent attempt to hijack real interest to learn.
I worked 2 years in publishing and sales representation to the academic market.
:) Seriously, be polite but firm, and be prepared to reiterate- some have been so high up in their ivory towers that oxygen is sometimes rare. The publishers can put out a new edition every 3-4 years only with the complicity of the professor.
*Advice on bringing down the prices of books appear below the rant*
[rant]
So there's a few things I'd like to set straight, especially for the whiny bunch (you can't bring prices down if you don't know who's responsible):
-trade stores buy books at 60% of the cover price
-university bookstores buy at 80% of the cover (a 25% markup)
-print runs on all but the most popular books (think 1st year intro) are ridiculously small
-professors are lucky if they make 10% of the cover price. Even if that amounts to $5,000, a tenured professor would expect to make more money than that for a few hundred hours of work. (It's not the money: it's publish or perish).
So, the university bookstore is obviously not making massive amounts of money, nor is the author(s). So, the publisher makes a killing, right? Well, sometimes. The guys cranking out a new edition of that $120 first year text every 4 years is making entirely too much money, as are those that bundle materials or otherwise force you to buy a new copy.
Smaller publishers that can't get professors to publish that big first year textbook with them generally aren't doing so well. Publishing any book cost several thousand dollars. Printing is not the biggest expense, and goes down fast as print run size increases (per unit, obviously). Editing and layout eats up most of the budget, then you have to add sales and distribution.
Yeah, there's a few people that think we could let professors write things on a wiki, and not bother with editing. Sometimes, you're right: there are some professors that can actually write. Let me be blunt: we reject 90%+ of manuscripts, and the other half can be unreadable without major editorial adjustments. Editors have to be highly educated, and it is not uncommon for them to be PhDs- and that doesn't come cheap.
An index also cost money and you can't just use a software package to tell you what words are on what page, as that's pretty useless.
Having spent a good part of my time in the sales side of things... do you realize how many books we have to outright GIVE to professors so they will consider the book for their class? They're only a few dollars a pop to print, but having to meet professors, find out what they are teaching the following year, mail them books once printed... all that costs a lot of money. In upper-level classes with small enrollments, you can be giving out 2% of the books, and some free copies for TAs (up to 1 per 25 students).
And don't get me going on the price of an ad in an academic journal, or sending sales reps to their conventions.
Moral of the story: it cost an awful lot of money to put out a book. There are profiteers - the first year textbook sellers that put out a new edition every 3-4 years, and the folks that would give you $4 for that $120 book.
This is not the music industry. Publishers -especially the smaller ones- are nerds that want to put out good books.
[/rant]
To get back to the prices though... as I said, there are profiteers: resellers and big publishers.
The resellers ought to be put out of business. Use eBay, whatever it takes, but don't sell them books.
There is another player in this market that has enormous power to set things straight, but is often overlooked: the professor.
If your professor wrote one of those fat 1st year texts which comes bundled- lobby them. Tell them you find such practices appalling, and that you would much rather spend money on beer.
If your professor asks you to buy those expensive books, ask them to complain to the publishing house. A couple professors that tell the sales reps they won't use the text again unle
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
If you think that you are getting ripped off, just steal the books. Why would you just let yourself get ripped? That's stupid.
This seems to be one where students should be able to fight and win.
1. Get the students organized (80% of them at least).
2. Make reasonable demands.
3. Don't buy the books at your local rip-off shop.
4. Change the local system.
5. Profit for the students.
Either gain power from money or numbers. You students have the numbers - just not the organization.
help out.
The ACM at Hopkins keeps copies of textbooks that members of the ACM can check out. It works pretty well with those classes that you only read the textbook once or twice.
--Hick Man -- rural superhero --
Why do the authors of textbooks continue to insist on going through publishers? Why do they not produce computerized works instead of printed books? If they really are making a pittance on the royalties, they shouldn't care whether the book is in print or in the form of a PDF (or some other doc format) -- the point is to get a textbook pub out.
Is this purely because of the editorial facilities of publishing companies? Is it really that hard to edit and typeset a document yourself? People do it themselves all the time in academic publications, why not in textbooks?
"Would you rather have a professor that didn't care too much for the book and didn't use it that much?"
Its been a long time since I've been in school, but something occurs to me: if the purpose of a university education is to teach you to think critically, do you get that critical education by just following a single textbook?
Or would you consider a variety of sources?
Would it not make more sense for a professor to lecture on salient points, and then ask his students to do research on those points? He could recommend a set of books that he has found helpful, but why require a specific book if the idea is to not "teach from the book", but rather impart an education?
I'm not trying to split hairs here; it seems that the textbook is nothing more than a crutch to save the professor effort, and the students time. It seems to reduce a degree to grades 13,14,15, & 16.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Thank you for making my day. I tried to read this whole post and could not stop laughing. Bravo.
"What are the important applications?"
Introductory calculus doesn't teach applications; Calculus 101 is typically integral calculus, which is purely a puzzle game to introduce you to differential equations, which clears the way for numerical analysis which is just getting into applications.
I took calculus 30 years ago and I am certain the field has not changed one bit. Not even a little.
>the publisher got the committee to approve a
>book before the content was even available to
>review.
The last straw that made my parents pull me out of public elementary school was a passage in a "history" book that presented Mussolini as a great man "...who made Italy's trains run on schedule..." and few if any other details. (The whole nationlist/fascist thing, or the fact that has arm in arm with the German Dictator, that they fought on the Axis side in WWII, none of that information seemed to have made the cut.)
When the school board was made aware of this, everyone was shocked, SHOCKED! And I got sent to a private school that was incredibly challenging and kinda sucked in a lot of ways, but the math teacher was into computers - YES! This was '74-79, so having access to a DEC machine and then the microcomputers as they came on the scene was a priceless experience!
Oh, and the school was founded by people who would have been executed by the 3rd reich had the war continued, so I got a healthy dose of just how evil Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini were, no chance of one of their books coming out in praise of he-who-hanged-by-his-thumbs.
This one is even better than the other! BRAVO.
no, this one is.
Tough shit for you. All I know about Bush is I'm making a hell of a lot more now than I was when Clinton was President.
Actually I know more than that, but your sig is one of those ridiculous over-simplification of politics that shows real idiocy.
Both sides are full of scumbags.
Your personal fortune has not one shits worth to do with the value of one politician or another.
Deal.
Otherwise, I agree with your take on corruption and the University system %100.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
translate from german it says "Mounting" is used for three things: "mounting" hourses. "Mounting" non-removable disks into the file systems, and now, "mounting" with the sex -- Christina Wedge"
There once was a really good book store that could get you nearly any book at a resonable price near by the local collage. They tended to keep the latest books the students needed in stock.
Made life easy for me. I would buy all the books I needed there and at the local used book store.
A few years ago the closed there doors. It was no longer proffitable.
Eather the students could get the books at a better price at the collage book store or the recomended text books weren't available to the local book store.
I don't actually exist.
Electronic books won't sit around for my kids to find someday. In fact, I doubt very much they'll sit around past one or two ebook product cycles.
You're probably right when it comes to proprietary e-books, but there are also lots of free-information e-books out there too -- see my sig.
Find free books.
Man, that's pretty ugly! At my college in upstate NY, textbooks in the library are treated just like any other book: you can keep it out for the whole semester. There are even some there, usually, because most people buy the books (since the average student here is probably richer than the average most places--certainly richer than me!--we were something like #5 on a list of most expensive colleges). Of course, if you don't bring it back then, the late fee is the cost of the book, but that's to be expected. After all, that usually means the student brought it home, so it's perfectly reasonable to ask them to pay for it.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
There are usually two types of "textbooks" that professors encourage you to buy. Or, rather, two scenarios.
The first is a book from which the professor will be teaching. He assigns readings from it, references pages in class, sometimes assigns questions at the end of the chapter as homework, etc. Sometimes it's one big book that covers the entire course (and often runs at $60+), but you can't do without it. Here all the rage is appropriate - with the diminishing printing costs why do prices of these books keep climbing? Also, you really *can't* do without buying this book and the professor has all the leverage he needs to make you go and buy it. No real way out - get it cheaper, get it online, order overseas, buy used, steal someone else's, etc.
2. The professor lists half a dozen books to buy for the course, often clicking "required reading material" without thinking. You spend $300 only to find out that it will never be mentioned in class or useful for anything except autodidactic reasons. You're pissed off and try to unload the books to the next class which, to your bitter rage, was given an entirely different list of books that they'll never read. This is a case where you use judgement. Often the professors will say that these books are for you to read on your own to broaden your knowledge of the topic. Simply don't buy the book or at least hold off until the professor assigns you the four pages to read from it. Then go to the bookstore, read the pages, write out the questions, and put it quietly (or not) back on the bookshelf.
A quick personal story: we were assigned a book for a cryptography class which I thought fell in the 1st category (since it was the only book assigned.) It was a small book costing $80. The book was, unfortunately, too advanced and mostly tangent to the topics we were discussing in class. After the class voiced its concern for the horrific waste of money on a book that's not helpful to do the homework or understand what's going on in class the professor explained that, "Neither the book nor the homework will have much to do with the class discussion. Those are for you to go home and do on your own. Please don't come to class with questions about the homework, as that is something that wastes my time as it doesn't pertain to what I'll be teaching anyway."
-s
If the only difference is the problems, borrow the latest book from someone to copy it. Fair use says you can copy a small amount. Get to know the people in your class, is it easier to study with someone else anyway. Then split the cost of one new book, and get used books. Copy the problems, or in most cases just have the book on the table when you work so you can both look at it.
If they pull the trick of only allowying you into a website if you bought the book, and so you can't get in because the other guy was first then talk to the professor. The large majority will have sympathy for you (especially if this is the first assignment and you talk to him as soon as it is assigned not the day it is due). Odds are this tactic will get the assignment changed for everyone to not require web access.
... forget something?
Yeah, electronic textbooks are a good idea, so you have to buy an e-book, a pricy initial investment. You rent your textbooks for the semester, rather than buy them, a problem for those of us who a) hate renting things and b) actually find some of our former textbooks a useful addition to their home library. Have fun after the end of the semester that you catch mono and miss the last 3 weeks of class and are granted incompletes to finish up over christmas, but fuck you, your textbook has expired, and you must rent it again.
Oh, and don't get caught loaning your e-book to a friend, that's copyright infringement that leaves a digital trail.
Then there is my whole distate for books on a screen, I like the feel of a book, sue me. Searchable text may be handy for some, but its bad for college students who never read their books as is.
Fact of the matter, textbooks are overpriced, just like gas is, they can do so because they have a captive audience. Fuck them.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I'm increasingly seeing professors simply assigning journal articles as reading, and distributing notes. This is a double win. First, teh journal articles are more current than the books based on said articles and second, they place them on electronic reserve, and you somply view them on your computer at your convienence.
Also had a professor that wrote a book for his class. He had been doing course note packets, but was incensed that the unviersity was chargins students almost $50 for the pack. So he got it edited into book form, declined all royalties, and got it on the bookstore shelves for $20. Funny enough, it's actually quite a good book and a number of other universities started using it.
Worst I ever had was a class that assigned a $100 book. Turned out it was abouta 400 page, novel-sized soft sover that was NOTHING but journal articles. I mean like just direct cut and paste, no commentary to speak of. Well shit, I could have got all those at the library any time I want. We ahve floors of journals, and most of them available online to boot. Worst of all? Never even opened it AND they wouldn't buy it back.
So's gravity. Anyway your "free market" sounds more like "market of anarchy", while the one we have in civilized society is all about freedom within the boundaries of a framework of rules. Maybe your inner rebel doesn't like living with rules? But that's the way it is, and I dare you to suggest something that's
Well if they passed a law that said gravity can't exist, and is immoral - I wouldn't try jumping off any bridges either. So why is it that when they pass a law that says information should be treated like pyhsical property, then all of a sudden people start calling me uncivilized and rebellious? WTF!
I did work with a Foreign language department in a Florida state university, and the wining and dining that book companies do when the faculty is trying to select new texts is scandalous. As far as I know, no direct cash payments were made, but lots of expensive meals and catering during presentations went on. The book companies know that they win the lottery when their books get selected. If they could get away with bribery, they would.
Man, it's expensive to be a young person these days. And I'm not even that old. Well, not compared to a tree anyway.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
But you usually can't find out what texts are being used for a given course until a week or so before classes at the earliest, sometimes not even until after classes start, leaving insufficient time to order and have it shipped to your door by the time you need it for the first set of homework assignments (my experience is that profs expect you to have the text by the end of the first week).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
University of PHoenix desgrees are worthless, you're kidding yourself. Many of the degrees they offer are MORE respected than 4-year instutions, since they are so bussiness oriented. No, they do not offer a classical course of study or theoritial/research degrees. That isn't their market. They offer real-world technology and bussiness degrees, something universities do a crappy job of.
Like take where I go, the University of Arizona. Your average large state school, with a heavy emphasis on research. You can get literally hundreds of kinds of degrees. But how about one for what I do, computer and network support? Well, no. There's computer engineering, but that's all hardware and circut design. Computer science is all programming. MIS is a bit of programming, a bit of bussines and a bunch of BS. There just isn't a technical, real-world degree for IT.
Now if you want to be a research scientist (espically optical science), an architect, a lawyer and such, no problem. We've got great programs for you. However, for IT the only option is to get a job doing it as a student, and get another degree.
The University of PHoneix, and like instutions, fills a void that traditonal universities do not. They are trade schools. IF you look at Europe, they are far more common and very much a part of the educational system. Many people do not go on to a formal university, but instead go to a secondary trade school, to learn what they need for the real world in their chosen field.
TAXPAYERS pay for their local school districts to provide books for all students, kindergarten thru 12th grade.
I didn't see the cost of textbooks as so much of a problem. The problem, I saw it, was the cost of tuition and other fees. I (and taxpayers in my state) paid some $90,000 for classes that I didn't attend--not even the tough ones--because my instructors generally sucked. And like many here (I think this is generally true of Slashdotters) I aced my exams and homework by using my textbook.
If you own the book yourself and the copies are for your own personal use only, then the answer is any number. If one or both of the preceeding conditions does not apply, then even a single copied page would violate provisions under fair use.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In Pennsylvania, local school districts are funded by taxes on property in the district. The typical homeowner pays thousands of dollars per year to the school district, whether or not they have children in school. School board elections turn into ugly battles when one candidate wants to improve schools and raise taxes, and another candidate is opposed to tax increases and spending. What % of taxes goes to textbooks? What alternatives exist that will cut expenses without sacrificing quality of education? Do "open source" textbooks exist for K-12?
Hey, stupids copy mp3s, dont they just wakeup and go, dammmmmn, lets buy one book, scan the hell out of it, the P2p it after selling the first 50 copies for $1 each.
Don't you have online courses with the text in them? I teach one in WebCT and charge a password fee for the use of the text. For another course, the department just pays me per head and the students pay nothing. Professors should write whole online courses and work out some deal with their schools. It benefits them and the students financially as well as pedagogically. I mean, the cost is a fraction of the text cost, and the material is directed toward the actual students that the prof has. No pages that are superfluous, everything all in one. I've been teaching postsecondary for 30 years, and I have to tell you that most of your instincts about profs here are right. I don't understand them myself.
My friend runs a service, Books on Campus where you sell it directly to a customer (you name the price) for a 5 dollar fee.
Yes, i'm affiliated, but damn it's a good service. Check it out.
no shit...I think I elluded to that fact, but to really learn calculus, you do need numbers, otherwise the people coming into calc from highschools would be lost.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Copied directly from my course syllabus: "(Be warned that the author has another cheaper book simply called Algebra, which should not be confused with our textbook.)" This is from an algebra class. He was also the same professor who decided to switch over to a more expensive textbook when he took over the linear algebra class. Although the department did do some good when they decided to switch textbook vendor/authors after the publisher switched over the a new edition for their calculus books (Stewart's 5th Edition, a $60 or so price increase for a few more pictures).
read the bunni comic
I only bought the textbooks for the first semester of Uni after that I never bought any again unless I thought I would use it as a refference book. I know at my Uni the Library had at least 5 copies of each book I had and even if they were out the public library had another cople of copies.
You are legally allowed to photocopy "parts" of any book and since most of the time you either write summary notes or just use a section of the book (pages 110-115,127 and 130-140) it's easy and leagal to get the information.
We were able to download all the slides that they used in the leactures and only one of two leactures reffered to the textbook more than "for additional reading see ???"
As for getting the latest version why bother you can alway get the old version and just relise that there may be some changes.
Here's a summary of my Uni text book budget:
*First Semester ~ $450 on text books.
*Every other semester ~ $50.
The university that I graduated from in December has a pretty good system that alleviates the high price of textbooks. Basically, students are charged a flat rate within their tuition to cover the charge of books. At the beginning of the semester students are issued books for their required classes with no extra charge. At the end of the semester, though, students are expected to return the books to the bookstore rental area. The books are recycled over the course of generally three years or so until the department decides to purchase a new set books for a given course.
It's a pretty good system and no students ever complain about the charges for books. If the book was worth keeping you could just not return it and then be charged the price of the book, which generally gets depreciated over time. It would probably behoove more universities to try a system like this.
I teach at the college level and the high price of text books is a problem. You would be surprised at the number of students who try to get by without buying a book (either because they can not afford it or they think they can get by without them). By the way, if you can not afford a text book it is worth a try to see if the instructor has an extra copy. I often loan books to students. My colleagues and I receive our copies for free so we have to stay aware of how much the book actually cost the student. For example I was about ready to use one text for a class when I discovered that a similar text, actually a bit better, was available for 35% less. I switched books. Also, I think it is the responsibility for the instructor to do their own homework and make sure that the book is relevant and that it will actually be used.
It's all a bunch of people talking about how much they paid for their textbooks. Obviously textbooks are expensive, we don't need to be talking about that, what would be nicer from all you smarty-pantses is a more thorough discussion of the background of, reasons for, and desirability of the current textbook publishing system, and if undesirable, insights into what is perpetuating it and strategies for changing or at least escaping from it as much as possible. Not "dude i am so with you, my calculus book cost $130 for the new addition and calculas hasnt even changed in the last 300 years ahahaha please mod me funny!"
While its arguable that PP&B is not the primary cause of textbooks being expensive, it is safe to say that their 33.2 cents per dollar figure for editorial and PP&B likely is correct.
Let's run some numbers using the figures you gave above, and assume a small, 1,000 book print run:
Dividing the editorial costs across 1,000 books yields an editorial cost of $20 per book. Adding this to PP&B yields a total cost of $24.50, including the author's royalties.
Multiplying by three (since 32.3/100 is about 1/3), we get $73.50, or a price cheaper than many of my engineering textbooks. Therefore, at least by my crude analysis, the "32.3 cents per dollar" figure is justified.
With a book, at least you have something physical to keep/scribble in/burn.
With an electronic text (please - they're NOT books), the publisher's distribution costs are negligible, but I expect book prices would only drop by 10-20%. The rest is now pure profit for the publisher.
Rant 1:
Last year, I bought a decent DSP book for about $90 used. My friend bought a whole shelf of books (including that one) new for about $50... in India, and then brought them back here. Same goes for my friend from Malaysia. In fact, almost every international student I have studied with has commented on the high price of books here. Clearly, the costs of publication are not a significant chunk of the price to the American student. Electronic publication will eliminate the publication costs, but I doubt it will affect price as much.
Rant 2:
Why is India fast becoming an engineering superpower? Well, I bet affordable books helps a fair deal.
1 is a 50% in a course, but you need 2.0 or higher to graduate. So you need an average of above 60%. GPA is based on letter grades, 4 being an A (>80%), 3 being a B (>70%), and so on.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Most people look for books that have been
highlighted already. WRONG! You could be
getting the book of a complete moron! Eek!
Instead, get the cleanest used book you
can. If you MUST highlight, do it yourself!
Then you know you got the right stuff! GL!
Nice.
A well-executed little Goebbels-Orwell echo chamber you cite there.
Your source, Fox News, a Republican party house organ quotes a psuedo-science corporate-created astroturf group (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) attacking the PIRGs for being environmentalist.
CFACT, like Fox, is sponsored and staffed by wingnuts with a political agenda and corporations with an economic agenda. I have no problem with corporations having an economic agenda (they damn well better) but see no need to believe the silly claims they pay fake science groups like CFACT to tout. Bogus denials of global warming and attacks on environmentalists should bring back memories of the tobacco companies and their similar coin-operated cancer "research" scams.
Reality check: Cigarettes cause cancer, global warming is real, CFACT is a scam and Fox is propaganda.
There has actually been some rather profound changes in our attitude to calculus and some big advancement in teaching Calculus in the last several decades.
The biggest change in mathematics is computers. In 1900 people were using continuous equations to estimate values for large discrete events. Today, it is really easy to add a column of a million numbers. In fact, we are tending to the opposite extreme. Today we are apt to use discrete mathematics to estimate continuous events. This change might best be called a de-emphasis of Calculus (so it would not warrant a big jump in text book prices). I met Joe Celko at Northface University who says they are using a technique of finite differences to teach calculus. He mentioned other schools are using a technique with nested sets to teach calculus. I dislike transfinite theory because it overemphasizes paradoxes, but I would like to see this new technique.
Personally, however, I believe there is a great deal of merit in the traditional approach to Calculus, and really couldn't see a value in any new technique unless it greatly improved the ability to learn the subject, or otherwise cut the cost of learning Calculus. Northface wanted to use the method of differences as they are focusing on CS. They had a good reason for their approach. I would not use the technique for engineers.
The text for one of my MBA classes was $140 so I went looking for it online. I found the version which is sold in India for $50, brand new. The only difference was that the Indian version was paperback. I could never bring myself to buy from a college bookstore. Last semester, the total for my books from the bookstore was $320. I found the same books online for $160. Doesn't take an MBA to figure out which is better.
My friend was able to get his textbooks for a LOT less by buying them through websites based out of the UK...
;)
For example, my linear algebra book is 110$ from amazon.com, but only 88$ from amazon.co.uk...
pretty funny
I just pick one or two (of my six) classes per semester to buy the books for and concentrate on reading, studying and doing HW for. Mostly the accounting, finance ones. Marketing, philosophy, social dance, etc... One really doesn't need to read to discuss. Especially in Philosophy it really helps with the bullshit skills (major importance later in life esp. w/ a business degree ;)). So one or two books and maybe a course packet or two runs 70 - 160 bucks; not too too bad.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
I paid $85 for my econ text book. The damn thing is a *paperback* book. It's not even a very good book. The chapers are too long and the quiz questions are too hard. What a ripoff.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
for a $100 textbook for a mandatory "Windows" class. He uses Suse and found no need to take this class. They tried to make him buy the book anyway and told him he could skip the class if he bought the book and took a $35 test and passed it.
He smoked the test, he said it was for drooling retards and that only vegetables on life support could fail the class.
What a waste of time, money and resources.
I was *NOT* happy over this..
Does not have degree.
Did not go to college.
Bar none, the worst ripoff I ever saw involved a prof who wrote her own book. She would call us and piss and bitch every semester if we tried to sell used copies of her books. The worst part is that she would change the items to be bundled with the book every semester, and actually assign a grade based on whether or not you had the various components of that semester's bundle. Had all the pieces with the new bundle? You got an A....didn't have all the pieces, you got an F, since apparently you bought a used copy.
Bought one book for $16 used on Half.com; sold it at the end of the semester for $16 on Half.com. I was only out some postage.
P2P is helping with the one, and it could conceiveably help with the other. I'm definately sick of paying $120 per textbook and piles of junk I'll never use and can't sell. Sick enough to 'steal' from the publishing industry, with zero qualms.
Of course, the reason why textbook publishers keep pumping out new editions is because the used book market destroys their market share. If they don't keep putting out new editions, then they'll see money from about one out of every six uses of a book.
Making the situation far worse is the way in which university bookstores price gouge - far worse than the book companies. They'll buy a book back for around 20% of its sale value, then sell it again at 80%. Then repeat the process endlessly. They make much more money off of used books, so they sell them whenever they can. Authors make no money at all on used books. So the reason the prices are so high is that publishers price the book to recoup some of the lost sales. Of course, the book stores, since they have a captive market, will frequently heavily mark up a new book as well.
The situation is bad enough that some book publishers, I don't know how seriously, have proposed binding a $100 bill into every fifth book, so that students would rip their books apart at the end of the semester, thus making them impossible to sell back.
The real solution, frankly, is to stop letting companies like Barnes and Noble run college bookstores, and for colleges to sell textbooks at cost to students - with no markups at all.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
The biggest problem is that most public school districts keep buying and buying textbooks at all grade levels from 1st to 12th every two or three years.
This is a a huge percentage of a school district's budget.
Does anyone know of a public school district which trys to use freely available open content text books by printing them theirselves?
And so I wept for you, for you are truly lost.
Just take a look at what happened at the NYU dental school at www.nyfairuse.org/ed.xhtml.
Even better. I know a place called Singapore, where they sell the exact same textbooks for half the price. Sometimes even cheaper when they're sold in international paperback editions. Somebody I know brought a whole case of books back one year and just charged $10 on top of his cost - so like still 50-60% of the cost here - to pay for his ticket. I think that's where a good number of the rediculously cheap "Like New" used books on amazon come from.
Calling PIRGS scams is a bit overmuch. There is a PRIG in my university, but they are not alone in taking money from students on a per-credit basis. For example:
student political groups
student ethnic organizations
The Queer Union
student run newspapers / zines
student run cafe / food store
etc
In addition, there is an automatic health fund that everyone has to pay into (unless they opt out). And there are other fees, too.
Therefore, it's a bit extreme for someone to act outraged that organizations fund themselves on a per-credit basis. It's something that happens in all universities. There's no trick to it because the student union votes to propose to the university the new funds, and the university itself decides who gets 'on the list.' Ralph Nader is not pulling the strings on his commie spies to get secret funding. It's right there in black and white for anyone bright enough to read and care about where their money is going.
In addition, the PRIG, afaik, is mainly in the business of organizing committees on this or that. So what Fox is railing against is the idea of organized free expression on a range of topics of interest to university students, mainly on the basis that a figure their news room dislikes is or was somehow connected.
Whatever.
I teach (among other things) first-year engineering physics; we use Halliday, Resnick, Krane, and have for many years. Our department does NOT upgrade the course text requirement every time a new edition comes out. Right now, I believe we are one edition behind.
As for me personally, every quarter at least one student will ask if it is "okay" to use an earlier edition. My response is along the lines of, "Well, the physics and the presentation is pretty much the same, but some of the homework problems I assign are not going to be in your older book. So, 'officially', I recommend you get the assigned text; unofficially, I suggest you make a friend in class who has the required edition, and work on homework with him or her." They seem happy with that, and having students work together on homework generally increases both their grades.
FWIW.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
Calc books are often one of the best deals out there. Penn State uses the same book for three semesters of calculus (intro through multivariate) and many other universities are the same, making the effective price about $40 per semester. This is about half the average cost of one of the books I need. And I've referenced by calc books more than any other beyond the end of the semester.
I suggest that publishers start renting out books, they can keep getting income from the books, students will save money by not buying a book they only need for a few months, and we'll save a lot of trees.
It seems that the publishers could easely make the same profit they make now by renting books at 2-5$ a month, asuming that a book would stay current for 2-5 years, and have a life span of at least a few years.
Evryone will benifit from this kind of system.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
Two words: Oreilly Factor
sheesh...
In reality, a college degree means nothing in most cases, but those who have one feel the need to validate their efforts, so they require one for any job they hire for.
There is no university conspiracy, with jaded graduates cynically upgrading their comrades simply to increase the illusory prestige of a slip of paper. That's paranoid. Degrees count partially for prestige reasons, of course, but also, and most importantly, because they suggest a certain level of competency in a particular area of study. It may not be a competency you have any respect for, but that is beside the point.
So, You have to get a degree, which in most cases teaches you nothing you couldn't learn better through experience.
A university education is an experience. It's quite banal to say that an experience 'teaches you nothing you couldn't learn better through experience.'
The whole system is a racket designed to benefit the administrators and faculty who, in most cases, are 1960's and '70s reject recycled hippies who have used the university as a place to hide all their lives.
This observation is false. Of course every university is different, but even between faculties there can be extreme contrasts in perspective. There are a number of very interesting stories, political and otherwise, to explain the various positions within universities, and almost none of it has to do with being dried up old hippies.
warez..crackz..c0urZe notez...educati0nal materi4lz...get e'm here :)
With that reward money, I could afford this life-sized chocolate God, filled with an infinite number of smarties.
With the extension acts, not much has gone out of copyright in a very very long time.
Who sees this activity and thinks that there exists a similar way of doing things elsewhere? Namely, a in cult?
Why do textbooks cost so much? There must be some value right? So read them and educate yourself. Don't bother matriculating anywhere.
It's time to open source fundamental knowledge anyways. What's the point of having the Internet unless we all put the knowledge required for earning university degrees online? MIT's OpenCourseWare is a fine start but now we all do it ourselves. Wikipedia is an example of our will to make knowledge freely available. Let's go to the next level by tracing the paths through our reasoning and knowledge.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
There are quite a few professors who assigned their own, heavily overpriced textbooks. Some academic fields, especially in things like film, seem to have certain cliques of professors who manage to sell each other's textbooks at gouging prices.
The college where I work specifically organises a secondhand book sale each semester. On top of that, we haven't just blindly updated Office (on either the student of staff PCs) so old textbooks are not a problem (actually, buying new textbooks for old versions of Office is becoming the problem).
Why do students need to buy textbooks anyway? Don't US universities give lecture notes and problem sheets out? At uni (engineering degree) I bought one or two books a year, all for subjects where it was either an open book exam or all the lectures were really early in the morning, so I was missing some notes.
Electronic books won't take off yet. Having printed books is FAR more convenient. I don't know if it's just me but I hate staring at the monitor (it's bad for my eyes and my brain doesn't think well :) ). Studying by reading a printed textbook is the only way to go.
There is nothing like reading while lying on the bed (also a good way to nap) and until you can do that with an electronic device, the electronic books are next to useless IMO.
Even now (out of school and unemployed), I would rather read a real book than read something online. I only read online stuff for articles (only a few pages), news, etc. There is no way I can sit in front of the monitor and read something for 4+ hours (unless I was being paid, as in a job).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Where can I get a book scanning machine? I've looked, and not found one anywhere. Maybe I'll build one. The hardest part is page turning.
The information is all good for you. Why not read more? Why not keep the book and read more?
If it's about not wanting that book in the first place, why not team up with your classmates, pool some money, buy one book and photocopy from that. Then sell the book and split the sales price again.
Not everyone needs to have the whole book!
http://www.textbookxchange.org was set up as a totally free site for students to buy and sell their textbooks to each other and keep their costs to a minimum.
The book you need is pusblished specifically for and has the name of the college you are attending plastered all over the cover?
Sure, the book might be identical to a book used at another college half-way across the country, but it might actually have been designed by the faculty of the department that I am taking the course in. Which means that while I might find one with an 'identical' cover save the college name, the book might have mildly altered content on several pages and chapters just to confound someone that might look for the book on the Internet...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Try again. I've seen printing costs be as much as CAD$4.5 per book- the smaller the print run, the more expensive it is. And no, that does not include labor costs, which on runs of about 2,000 for some Canadian small runs- well, it's a different situation than a big 1st year American textbook.
:)
Look, I thought I was clear: you ARE being gouged. By resellers and big publishers. Know your enemy, and know that your whining about wanting $20 textbooks make you sound like a goof. You'll never get anything changed that way.
Few professors adopt a text the first year, and by year 5 it starts dropping off rather dramatically. You wouldn't want to print 10 years worth of textbooks at once, as it costs more to have it in a warehouse than order a reprint. Plus, if you don't put out a new edition, professors often buy another one- it's to profs we push the books, and their behaviour makes it expensive to "push some books on a class".
I assure you that if publishers could cut the price of salespeople, they only would be too glad to do so.
As for the cost of foreign books... a lot of them are cheaper because they are co-published, and a lot of those (say) Indian books are edited in North America and sold at cut-rate to publishing houses there because that is what the market will bear. With a few rare exceptions, cheap foreign books are poorly printed, and importantly for university social science markets- not relevant to the national context. Canadian professors want Canadian examples, Americans want to study American rather than British examples. But generally we don't offshore for many of the same reasons we don't want to offshore strategic IT work- the cost savings simply do not justify the risk. And when we do have one nice big print run to lower prices, shipping the damned things takes a pretty hefty hunk of change.
If you don't believe me, read up on the industry, or go ask a publisher (especially a small one). What I say might start to sound less ridiculous.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I moved to Britian for school. Text books are a lot cheaper (Introduction to Neural Nets by Kevin Gurney only ~$35 here on Amazon.com like $90) Just if I could get home tuition I would be in good shape.
Oh and a note it is funny going into the bookstore on campus here with all the Not for Sale in US or Canada stickers. Just shows how much US students get screwed since a lot of the book are half the price.
The law in the UK says that you can copy one chapter or 5% (whichever is greater), and one article from an issue of a periodical or journal.
I myself can't see why people don't use libraries more! Here in Oxford you simply can't get through most courses unless you spend a considerable amount of time per week sitting in a library reading reference only books.
Make notes for god's sake!
My company makes the software that several universities in Canada are using for their used-textbook stores.
They seem to be doing well, if the record sales at Waterloo are anything to go by. They pay students a lot more than 10% of the original price, because they operate on a consignment basis: they only have to pay when the book is sold.
What I want to know is how the buyers are able to count out the money they give you for your books so fast?!
At Oregon State, the buyers would take your books, stack them into several piles in rapid fashion - without looking up prices - and then offer $xxx for your books.
The part of this process that interested me was that the buyers always had a wad of cash in their hand and would flip out cash without counting the money - just pick off the bills with their thumb in about 1/4 a second and hand the money to you.
Darin
btw - in the Early 80's we were upset that new books were going for $40/$50 each and were being bought back for $2 - $20...
I have graduated from Tampere University of Technology, in Finland. I remember one course about networking protocols that had quite an interesting approach to course material.
:) I'm not sure if this would ever be applicable to United States.
Anyway, the story was that according to Finnish copyright law, the definition of "fair use" is that you can quote/copy or whatever up to 20 pages of a "publication" (not sure if that absolute page number is a real value or not). Anyway, the point was that different editions of the same book constitute as different "publications".
As you can see on the course page, the course material includes several "chapters" from Stallings book about datacomm. The page says "fifth edition". However, the actual material was distributed as a 100-page photocopied collection. 20 pages from first edition, 20 pages from the second, 20 pages from the third...you get the idea.
Students in that course kinda liked the idea, saved us some money
Why are students required to buy textbooks in the first place? I got a book grant from my college (Trinity, Cambridge) of 135 pounds in the second year, and I couldn't find enough books I needed to spend it all. I ended up getting a couple of thick hardbacks containing the Java 1.2 API which are very useful for raising my monitor above the desk, ML for the Working Programmer because the author was one of the coolest lecturers, Concurrent Systems by Jean Bacon because it might be useful sometime (although it turns out the handouts she gave were photocopied from it), and Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell (what? It's from the O'Reilly ... in a Nutshell series, isn't it?) The comic book's the only one I ever read, although I did buy one (1) book the following year because it covers the maths I needed for my dissertation project extremely well.
Not true. I teach at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Most of my students are from the subcontinent, and have even less money to spend than the typical American college student.
I'm well aware of that. I teach from my own book-in-progress, which they get in the form of free photocopies.
I must admit, though, to being tempted to start charging for any student whose cellphone goes off in class!
First off, I work for a book bindery that does a lot of college textbook printing(so I might be biased). But don't blame us for the high costs of textbooks, we are only getting 1986 prices for the books we print, despite the rises in costs of living, materials, etc. Many book binderies have gone out of business in past couple of years because publishers banding together and forcing the prices they pay down to nothing. That said.. I get all my textbooks for free because I make them :)
I tried finding a link to the stories about this text book (I think it was for a dentestry class), but got so many hits on things that didn't apply I couldn't find it.
I work in K-12, and a few publishers are trying this out. Most people don't need their grade school texts after they graduate (the school does, but we'll just raise taxes to pay for it), but college books? I've kept most of my electronics books. I refer to them now and again. With electronic copies, you won't be able to do that after the key expires.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
My daughter took Latin in High School.
At a parent/teacher night I went to the Latin class to find out how my she was doing. The teacher was very enthusiastic about the year's progress and remarked on how lucky the students were to have a new edition of the Latin textbook.
The room fell deathly silent.
I put up my hand and asked, "Why would anyone need a new edition of a Latin textbook?"
"Progress," he screamed. The irony apparently lost.
One of my instructors pointed this out. In 1970 when he first started teaching, the cost of a Chemistry text was $25. He used the same text for five years, without an edition change. Unfortunately, science changed, and the authors didn't update, so he had to use a new book. This preempted a policy which required books be reviewed and updated every two years (whether or not it was necessary). He's found increasing error rates ever since. My Chemistry book now contains at least 12 errors, and costs $135. The lab manual, a floppy paper manual that costs $65, contains experimental procedures which are specifically disallowed by lab safety (like pouring certain reactants into water, when you should pour water into certain reactants instead to prevent violent explosions). Likewise, my American Civilization text costs $85, and omits several important details which I learned in High School.
So the question is, why am I paying more money for less accurate and informative texts? Because the school profits from them. It's not merely the indirect profits - the actual margin on most books is sometimes as low as 10% - but the manufacturers often give direct rebates to the college book stores. These "back ends rebates" amount to thousands of dollars, and represent a large share of the books cost.
Then there are the book buy backs - where they give you sometimes as little as half the face value for books that are in pristine condition. My solution - I sell them to individuals instead of the book store, for the same half-price. If I don't profit from my books, nobody does.
As I am currently working on my Master's, I've had to spend a ton of bucks on texts.
Each course at my local State U costs me about $390 in tuition. (For a three credit course, that's a bargain!) I've had courses where the texts cost almost as much as the tuition for the course. After my first semester, I said "no way!"
Now I purchase all of my texts from overseas as the International Editions. These are the exact same textbooks published by the exact same publisher and everything is exactly the same, page numbers, problems, colors used in printing, you name it. The only exception is that they come in paperback and they usually say "NOT FOR SALE IN NORTH AMERICA." on them.
How could you find an international edition? Well I'm glad you asked.
Go to Amazon.com and look up your book. Generally they will have them for the same sales price as your local college bookstore. Here is a popular Finance textbook on sale for about $135. It's packed with useless CDROMS and other stuff that will never be used.
If you notice it has a "Buy New and Used from $34.95" link on the page. That will take you to a page where Amazon will list a lot of zShop vendors who have the book. Some of them will come right out and say "Int'l" or "paperback" edition. If they have the book as "brand new" and it's only around $80 or so, that's an indication that your book will be arriving UPS or Fedex from Singapore or Taiwan as the Int'l Edition. What a deal!
Refuse to pay those outrageous prices at the bookstore! I know in the case of business schools, reading a good business newspaper or magazine will teach you far more about business than any textbook. If you care about learning, spend the savings on that!
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
Looks like at least one well known author of text books is (gasp) trying to reduce the cost of educational materials while increasing quality by providing his latest educational content as a service at gradiance.com. One way to sign up for the service is to buy a book for $15.
Students are being seen by educators, text book sellers and financial institutions as a money-making scheme.
I see it, however, as an effective population control method. What a fantastic way to ensure a perpetual supply of white-collar slave labor!
There is a solution.
Most people don't need to go to University. English degrees? Humanities? Shit! Go to a library and join a discussion group. You don't need to shell out thousands for a worthless degree. University was cool in the old days when two graduates in pith helmets would meet in the middle of the Sahara desert and cry, "I say, a fellow schollar! Where do you hail from?" "Why, Princeton; I'm working on a dig with professer Jones." "Ripping! Is he still teaching then? You ought to come to my tent for a hot snifter!"
If you don't plan to become a doctor or an engineer or wear a pith helmet and fight Nazis, you're INSANE to be racking up idiot debt at university.
Cuz guess what? You can make plenty of money in any number of unconventional ways in the real world. Working in a cubicle is for chumps. (sorry guys. It is. You know it.) And here's the thing; if you start out without debt, then you have the luxury of being able to take your time and build/find something which will work for you. Having no debt when you are young means that you have options.
Get a grunt job when you are young, build up some capitol, and use it guaruntee a loan. Stay living at home for as long as you can. It's cheep. If you move out too soon, without a plan or any savings, then you're instantly in financial limbo; you'll be too burned out working to make rent to be able to build any sort of life other than hand-to-mouth.
Think about this stuff! A little planning will save your life. Just my two cents worth. Think about it. If you're young, don't let your parents pressure you into a life you might regret later.
"Organize your time or somebody will do it for you" --Those who don't figure out what they want from life will be shafted into serfdom. Every time. Period.
Good Luck.
-FL
At Southeast Missouri State University, they rented textbooks. After enrolling, students all went to Textbook Services and got the appropriate books for their classes. It was something like $10 per book per semester, and if you kept the book beyond the deadline at the end of the semester, you were billed for it.
Textbooks were cycled every three years or so. The bonus was, your book usually came with all the important stuff already highlighted!
What?
The college I go to changed the Calculus book Three times as I took Calc I,II,And III, and the only thing that changed was the Chapter numbers!
It turns out there arent a whole shitload of Calculus problems that give nice, even answers!
The publisher bastards were giving kickbacks to the teachers for changing texts. One of the profs noticed that I had remarked Chapter 12 to Chapter 16, and told me I was stealing! These stupid jerks didn't even change the order of the problems, just the chapter numbers! (If you have the fifth, sixth, and seventh ed, you can check yourself.)
What I want to see is textbooks scanned and distributed for free, like alt.binaries.ebooks, or something.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I'm studying at Columbia University, and (surprise surprise) this is starting to become a big issue here too. There have been a number of articles about it in the school newspaper over the past few months. One pretty scary statistic they quoted is that "a recent study by the National Association of College Stores found that the amount the average New York college student pays for textbooks has increased 41 percent in the last five years". (emphasis mine)
[Link to article in Columbia Spectator]
One thing that's sprouted recently at Columbia is a direct student-to-student text exchange service, which basically cuts out middlemen and shipping times/costs. I've found that it works great due to the tiny size of the Columbia campus and lack of afforable off-campus housing (hey, it's NYC) - virtually everyone using the service is within walking distance, making transactions a breeze. I've managed to save a fair bit of cash each semester thanks to it.
[Link to DogEars site]
I just love the way facts piss-off people!
Give me a break. I can name one textbook that I doubt there's one person reading this who hasn't at least looked at, if they don't own one or more copies. It's got to have sold well over a million copies...and it has no pictures, and was typeset by the authors, *not* the publisher.
Trade paperback novels cost between $12 and $20 these days...yet K&R's The C Programming Language has consistantly been twice that.
mark "the phrase 'profit center' comes to mind"
most books are available in India at 1/45 th marked international price.. its not just the discounts, but the availability of paperbacks that make it so cheap. For the hot off the press variety, you still have to buy them in Europe. Another reason to travel this summer eh?
I didn't RTFA, but off-the-cuff, the industry of textbook sales has gotten to be quite a cottage industry for students overseas. Apparently, overseas students buy the books cheaper than those here in the US and can sell them used at a premium price in the US. A couple of entrepeneurs have caught on this discrepancy and found a niche market. Needless to say the publishers aren't quite happy. I read about this issue in a NYTimes article by Tamar Lewin in the October 21, 2003 issue. Unfortunately the article has to be paid for at this moment, but you can still google it to find the article: http://www.google.com/search?q=tamar+lewin+student s+overseas&btnG=Google+Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o e=utf-8.
Linux at home
i was mad about this when i was a student; my solution was to gather up all of the online bookstores i could find in order to find the lowest price for a book. this didnt allways work, as sometimes, the 'required' reading included very obscure stuff. in any case, check out
www.usedtextbook.com
, and try to salvage some of your budget
My annual salary is the high 30s at a college where the student population is around 600 full-time equivilant students. I consider this salary to be in-line with that of other small business owner/operators. I dont drive a fancy car or own an expensive/fancy home. I work, on average, about 53 hours per week.
Seriously, get the hell out of this profession. 53 hours a week for, what, $39,999?
You work 53 hours a week as a carpenter, and you're gonna gross something like $53,000.
53 hours a week as a plumber and you're gonna gross more like $79,500.
It's abso-god-damned-lutely insane to work 53 hours a week [ad infinitum, or at least ad excessus] and gross under $40K.
Enjoy life. Earn the big bucks. Get your wife back in the kitchen and make some babies with her.
I can sure relate to this! I had a stage design class 20 years ago that required a $150 book with glossy inlay photos of just about every set design ever imagined. We never even opened the book in class - instead had to go back out to the hardware store for tools (the book was "required" by the previous instructor, but the current instructor preferred a more hands-on approach). Luckily, the bookstore bought back my book - at a third of the price! (which they then resold used for $120).
/book). I was told by the bookstore that they still had two copies of the 2nd edition, and would not order any more until those had been sold. So, I pointed my students at O'Reilly and bookpool.com. And I caught hell from the administration for even suggesting that students get books from anywhere other than the campus bookstore.
I've since taught a class on web servers at a local tech college. When the 3rd edition of Apache: The Definitive Guide was released, I told the bookstore that I needed my students to have the latest edition (I chose the title with its price in mind, as opposed to the suggested courseware that ran $90
But, for some courses, a mainstream O'Reilly book may not be appropriate. Sometimes you need specialized course books, which will never sell in the volume needed to bring them below the $50 range. Writing books takes a lot of time and research, or you don't get a book worthy of teaching from. While information is freely available on the internet, is it reliable, trustworthy information? How can you tell? Why, you get the endorsement of a publishing company! Which, of course, costs money - as does the authors time, etc.
So here's my suggestions -
Teachers - find reasonably priced books for your students where ever you can. Screw the campus bookstore - trust me, the campus will find other ways to swindle the students (like selling their names to advertisers like the University of Minnesota does). Find reliable, affordable books for your students where ever possible to do so.
O'Reilly, Prentice Hall, etc - is there any way you can reduce the costs of these books? Can publishers take a loss on instructional materials, knowing that students who value the materials will probably by other, more mainstream books in the future? It seems that the price will never come down as long as we keep purchasing books from these small, speciallized publishers who only deal with books for class-use. Tim O'Reilly, as such a strong leader in the publishing industry, can you help push this, and in the long run, help make education more affordable?
Authors - offer updates online where ever possible. If it's possible for someone to dust off an old 1st edition, and with a few corrections, updates, have the same material as the 3rd edition, why not enable them? Obviously, if the new edition is a significant rewrite, there's little that can be done. Also, try to find publishers that sell mainstream books as well as educational material. This not only can potentially make your book cheaper to the student, but you may find non-students buying your books from the publisher's catelog. How can that be a bad thing?
School administrators - quit your job, and join the public sector. Let people who's first goal is education (not profit) run our educational institutions. (U of Minn, I'm talking to you!). There's plenty of room for greed out there in business, we don't need you in education.
Students - start your own used book clubs without the help of the campus. Share materials where ever you can, and DEMAND BETTER of your school! You're paying for the service, in this consumer-driven country, it is up to you to demand changes!
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Only if the book didn't mention Perishable Commodities.
Interesting. You attack the people/groups who are presenting an argument but say nothing about the argument itself. Your news sources present a perfectly neutral, balanced, propaganda-free opinion, I imagine. Clearly, those who disagree with you must be Nazis, "wingnuts" or astroturfing.
;-)
You want bias-free news? Good luck! Think about this: EVERY organization, corporation, foundation, etc. is biased and has an agenda. Fox, PIRGs, NRA, ACLU, Microsoft, FSF, even charities and philanthropists. You and I are biased as well. Our job as thinking human beings is to keep an open mind and consider what they say on their own merits.
For example, the argument your parent-comment was trying to make: Should I be forced to support a political organization as part of my tuition? Suppose the money went to this "Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow" instead of the local PIRG.
Of course I'm aware of the right-wing bias of Fox News, and the article is something of a troll. And yes, the CFACT website is blatantly pro-business. (Keep a large salt shaker handy!) But reading these sites is still valuable, especially for someone who disagrees with 90% of what they say. A deep conviction in your own beliefs can make you blind about their flaws. Nobody's perfect, so it helps to get another opinion from the "enemy" once in a while. If you only listen to people you already agree with, well, what was that about an echo chamber again?
By the way, if you're going to dismiss me as another Wingnut Defender of the Right, you've got the wrong idea. I say similar things to conservatives when they talk about the "liberal media bias".
Great company to work for but not when buying books.
They own the distribution so they charge an arm and a leg.
How many university students here have a Foilets bookstore? My guess is %100.
Here is a hint.
Get them online from places like amazon.com and half.com . You can get them to half to 2/3rd's the cost. Still expensive but you can delete a middleman out of the cost picture.
I think the situation is improving since the internet enables students to recieve books elsewhere. This forces companies like Foilets to lower prices.
http://saveie6.com/
I am in law school, and I can say that I find it very upsetting to pay $80 or more for a text when I usually find the text at least partly unsatifactory. For me, a text should serve several purposes: (1) to teach the course and (2) to serve as a reference for later (at work). Law books, in my opinion, fail both of these tests.
For those not in law (in the US), the basics of law (in most fields) is referred to as the "black letter law". Black letter law is basically the common standard/state of the law holding over the majority of the jurisictions of the US. Generally, courses are designed to teach the black letter law, caselaw which interprets it, and the major exceptions that have developed. The thing with law texts is that they almost never point out the black letter law in a straight forward manner. For example, with contract law, the basics are that a contract is formed when there is an offer, an acceptance, and consideration. Thus, a text will likely have a section entitled "offer", but instead of setting forth the black letter of what constitutes an offer, the text might immeadiately present a case or more which highlights what an offer is.
I'm guessing that the idea is that making the students read the cases to get the law teaches them how to determine the law for themselves. The funny thing is, there is a big business for "study guides" which are keyed to law texts and summarize things and set forth what is being taught as well as "nutshells" which set forth the black letter law. Students also trade "outlines" which are summaries of courses - you can even find these online. Since students already have access to pre-digested versions of the texts and compilations of what the law is, shouldn't the black letter be included in a text to improve it's use as a reference/teaching instrument?
For me, a good law text should, for each topic, include (1) the black letter law (including important jurisdictional notes such as major exceptions) along with any plain language explanations and introduction which is needed, (2) caselaw which supports, expands, or provides examples on the black letter law, (3) caselaw exemplifying the major/important exceptions, and then (4) the notes and questions that the texts always have. Thus, in a crunch (whether during the school year or later, in work) when you need to know the law on something, you can find it (or at least the law as of the date of the text) rather quickly.
With all the outlining law students do already, I think we should create open license texts in the open source sense for various areas of law. The case decisions are free (the Fed. Gov. doesn't get copyright in them), so there shouldn't be any impediment, and they would, when properly done, be a great improvement over current texts. Anyone interested?
There's actually a fairly good alternative to this problem. Start your own student book trade! Lot's of schools have them, and they actually move a bunch of books through them. Mine moves a little over $1k worth of books a semester. That's not much, considering the amount that the bookstores make, but it helps. I've sold almost all my books through it.
It's a pretty simple thing to write, and well, this is Slashdot.
The bundled materials that often come with text books, aside from not being used and often being useless, keep college bookstores from buying books back because they have to assume that any software may have been copied or that the media has been damaged, and that is just if the student has been able to keep up with it.
After hearing some complaints about book prices, one college professor said, "But look what you are getting. The text and the study guide." He was suprised to find out that they were not bundled and the price was still insane.
I believe that when instructors are choosing books, bundled media should be concidered a negative feature and instructors should also make an attempt to keep up with the total costs of using a book for a class.
Seriously. At the University of Minnesota, I had a professor who required the book he wrote to be purchased at Kinko's, just off campus!
My mom talked a little with them, and ended up giving them $2.
If universities are going to act like gangsters then they should be subject to RICO (the USA law against organized crime used to put Mafia leaders in jail for long periods).
Professors and administrators see students as cows that should be milked for every penny that they can get. Then the claim the 'prestige of educational enlightenment' or some other nonsense phrase when people complain.
University education should operate like certificate education. You pay a fee for a test that proves that you have mastered a certain body of knowledge. If you don't pass the test then you pay the fee again and take the test again. This is not such a radical idea. Look at the Bar exam. Lawyers don't trust anyone who graduates from law school to know anything about law. No, they set up their own exam to see if people coming out of school know the law.
The idea that someone should have to pay $160 for a first-year Spanish textbook is a shakedown, pure and simple. If the university is claiming that you need to pass Spanish 101 to take Spanish 102 and that you need to buy their $160 textbook to pass Spanish 101, well then this is extortion. Universities can not use budget cutbacks as an excuse to act like gangsters. Especially for a class that 20% of students could pass from knowing Spanish as a family language or from watching Univision or private study.
Universities need to be taken down a few notches in their status in society. They exist to provide education, nothing more. A college degree doesn't make you better or inherently smarter.
The MIT program of offering class materials and lectures is an excellent place to start.
The overly simplified reason things are going up across the board is thanks to creative finances.
In my school I pay roughlt 70% of the true cost for everything and 50% of that is payed for visa federal assistance.
My books are roughly 40% of my school costs 60% are insidentals and associated costs. In the bay area in the California State system forign students pay the full market rate to the tune of at least 80% more than what I pay. for instance to go to school during the semester one student i know will pay easly 800USD::1 unit hour, text books cost 15% more for them.
Thanks to bush and him pissing of foring countries less people want to come here thus we take the brunt of it. We are now on the 4th administration to NOT admit the entire california economy is built on sticks and will fall UNLESS it can stand on it's own.
Several years ago I read a story in a jornal about a publisher selling a CD-ROM book for medical students. It was some critical book that the students would find important to hang onto after they left school (anatomy ?).
Evidently the CD's were encrypted with time senstive keys. Medical students could buy access to the data for the time that they were in school, but after they completed school they had to continue to pay several hundered dollar's a year to the publisher to be able to continue to access the book's contents (it did include access to updates too).
I never heard anymore about it. Hopefully it didn't do very well. It was a bad precedent a la RMS's "Right to Read".
you know, I can support the issuance of an encrypted PDF that only you can read using gpg/pgp for use on your PDA or school computers user drive. you know, a pub/priv key that's linked to your student email/account.
i can get into that.
There are a few solutions to this problem.
First off, a big problem is that publishers who know their books are being used as course-books, publish a new version with nominal changes, very quickly. That ensures that you can't get your money back by selling your book as used, and students can't save money buying used books. The only reason schools and professors go along with this, is that the nominal changes don't affect their cirriculum, except they may have to change page numbers.
I would prefer that the old books are used. Schools should have a contract with any publishers, saying that they will continue to sell the same book, at a pre-set price, for X number of years.
Second: I would encourage anyone with a scanner to scan-in their books. A sheet-feed scanner (or a scanner with an ADF) can just be loaded with the pages of a book, and automatically digitize them. Then, distributing them as text files, PDFs, or any other format would be easy. People just don't seem willing to do digitization on their own... That's why we see many more CDs and DVDs on Peer-to-Peer networks than TV shows, et al.
In addition to this, it may very-well be considered fair-use for professors to distribute electronic copies of out-of-print books. Both educational purposes are involved, and the book is out of print, so it's hard to say there is major financial damage being done. I'm sure there would be a lawsuit when first done, but I bet the schools would win. Either classes would start comming with free books on CD-ROMs, or book publishers would have to keep their books in-print to prevent that from being fair-use.
Third: Instructors should be more careful about what they require students to buy. I know I had an english class where I bought 3 expensive text-books, where only one of them was used. One we only read a 3-page story from, and the thrid was NEVER EVEN OPENED. I complained to the teacher, and to administrators, but they all said there was no blame to place... It's just not considered bad to bleed your students. I wouldn't be surprised if publishers are actually bribing professors in the near future to require lots of worthless books.
Last: There are a few professors that care about book-costs. I know one Unix instructor who uses the FreeBSD Handbook as the only course material, and doesn't require buying any books. I know another teacher who went to great lengths to allow students to use any of the past 3 revisions of the course book. He listed the different pages for different revisions, and even went as far to print-up a sheet which listed all the differences in content between the versions. Unfortunately, the latter professor went through a great deal of work to do this, so few would be willing to do so. The former professor has the better system, but others are not very considerate, and just don't care how much money is being wasted by students.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
i think you were refering to mackay street. anyhow, there are actually 2 (TWO!) of these places on that street. one right near the hall building. the other vietnamese place right across the library building (the next to the coffee house place you were talking about). i know the names, but i'm not going to bring them up here. hint: (U and J)
make sure though when you get the book that it's the right version number. also, sometimes the photocopied version has missing pages and unclear text.
what i usually do photocopy my book. there's this place on sherbroke right across mcgill where a LOT of mainland chinese students go copy books manually (meat market!). it actually only takes an hour per book on average. costs cheaper (about $10-15) per book, and better quality.
interesting to say, there are profs at both mcgill and concordia that have open book exams, but permit only ORIGINAL copies in the exam room. funny to say, but you know, these books were written by the same profs that are teaching their profs! what a way to make even more money off your students!
now books come shrinkwrapped - and bookstores wont do refunds if the plastic is removed. idiotic.
i just got a book that costs $160+tx canadian, and I got that very same book back in hong kong for $40 canadian.
those mofos...
my blog
It seems quite easy to get the very popular, very expensive books on p2p programs. It is nice that people bother to scan these in, as otherwise books tend to get lost in time(I found a 1967 calculus book better than any text I have seen published this decade, and I've looked through a lot of calculus books). This however is a suboptimal solution.
The perfect option seems to be to just write better books, and publish them openly, without restrictions. At the moment I am compiling some material on discrete math and not asking any money from my classmates, who use it. When it is complete I will probably publish it online, free. If others who are familiar with other fields would do the same, maybe we could establish a free courseware library, similar to wikipedia, but with much more extensive entries. Anyone with me?
I attended DeVry (aka DeVry Inc.)I never used any accompanying CD-ROM. Studygroups of five often shared a single text. Rule #1 - Do Not buy texts unless professor says it will be used. Rule #2 - Do Not buy text unless previous classes used it.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
The Crucible is obtuse because it's really about McCarthyism but Miller can't criticise it explicitly. RMS isn't going up against an authoritarian regime (yet) so he can be more direct.
The Grapes of Wrath is putting a (fictional) human face on the statistics of the Depression -- the target audience is people who know the information but are not swayed by it alone. Perhaps if things continue to slide, and therefore people are not convinced by The Right to Read, someone will write a dystopia of novel-length.
I'm a philosophy major. Most primary philosophy texts are available online. If I do buy the books, they can be easily had at most bookstores. The notable exception was for my symbolic logic class - $120 for the book!
I know the instructor who teaches it at a nearby junior college and he puts the book on reserve in the library and gives students a list of the assigned problems. He even suggested buying the book, copying the problems, and returning it.
I suggested the "wine brick" approach to the latter. Pass out a handout on the first day that says:
The point of college, ideally, is to learn. Yes, there are some people who do best on their own; such individuals are known as autodidactics. However, most do not have a diverse enough skill-base to teach themselves everything effectively. College provides instructors with specialized skills who can at the bare minimum introduce people to areas they'd never even thought of before they had to fulfill a requirement or went scrounging for a few last credits.
However, I will concede your point that a basic bachelor's degree has become a baseline for entry into most job markets, and not from necessity. I've seen a number of people who are not at college because they want to be, but because they wanted to be able to get a job. When you want to be there, college is geek heaven: all the knowledge you could want, there for the taking.
My student jobs taught me a lot, even though they paid horribly (generally enough for me to pay off my bookstore bill, which was typically about $400 a semester, and have something to pitch towards tuition and a small outing or two, though). My second one was in one of the best work environments I've ever had, which made up for a lot, and is much of the reason I've chosen to head for grad school and more debt.
My professors were, and are, awesome. They may not have been suited to be the top dogs in the corporate world, but they provide intellectual challege, excellent instruction, and ample office hours. Doesn't matter if you're looking at the very small, very education-oriented liberal arts school where I got my degree or the mid-to-large university that dominates my home city where I took a couple quarters' worth of courses, I had people who knew their stuff inside and out. That goes for the grad students, too, though they were either classmates or assisting the professors.
While I'm on this, I know my professors weren't getting paid astronomical sums. Probably 40-50K a year, with 40+ hours per week when classes were in session, and they often wound up taking work home. They got weekends off as frequently as their students did, which is to say not often. Additionally, I know they did what they could to find quality texts that didn't cost an arm and a leg. When that didn't happen, they'd use the expensive one as much as possible and cut back on other books they might have required us to buy. The publishers, on the other hand, can be stinkers: we had one text where they only shipped 1/2 the requested number. Naturally, this was the most expensive one, as well.
Sure, it'd help if we had a better K-12 educational system, and more apprenticeships available, but once you factor in the cost of maintaining the buildings, paying the faculty, providing the various services, etc., the costs aren't so bad. (I'm not touching the adminstration; I don't have sufficient observations to base anything on and I'm not entirely sure their salaries aren't inflated.) A waste of money to support college, though? I think not. It is one of the few places where people are encouraged to think about what they're told, rather than to believe without question, and I cannot imagine any skill with a greater need of honing than that of logical reasoning. How else are we to tackle publishing conglomerates?
If your school is considering selling their book store to Barnes & Noble-- and this is common-- put up a fight.
The GaTech book store was pretty shoddy as it was, but when B&N took over it went straight to hell-- not only are the books still overpriced, but the stock dropped to almost nothing. We now have a large, brand new B&N store that's probably four times the size of our original book store, but which has maybe half the shelf space devoted to textbooks that the original did. Used books are nearly nonexistent on the shelves-- I found one when I went at the beginning of this semester, and it was literally unbound and ruined-- and selling at $15 less than new. They hadn't even heard of one of my classes-- a technical writing class that almost everyone at Tech has to take-- and had no shelf space for it.
We've been sold out and screwed beyond belief in this fiasco-- don't let your school do the same to you.
For students at GaTech: if you need your books fast, go over across North to Engineer's. If you can wait a week or two, order from half.com or the like.
Someone needs to invent a easy way to scan pages, or launch a distributed effort. Then it's bookster time. OCR and figure recognition are very good, as is the ability to generate PDFs.
There's another problem besides the high cost of text books - during my engineering degree, I often lugged around over 50lbs of books and notes. There is no reason that the university can't mandate that the books be made available electronically - should cost a FRACTION of the money for distribution of dead trees - and build the cost of the electronic book into the cost of the course, making sure piracy doesn't matter.
When I can scan, OCR, count in my time, and print a book with color diagrams cheaper than I can buy it mass printed, there is something WRONG. Does this situation sound framiliar? I would love to have all my engineering references available on my notebook computer - paper texts are a PITA.
Need I mention moving?
Something to think about. Oh, but then, they won't make any new books - good point. Maybe there are enough books out there. Or it's time for open books and open collections of wisdom distributed at 0 cost through the net, and constandly updated and reviewed.
Sounds like something ELSE I head somewhere before.
..don't panic
I'm not blaming: it's normal that small print runs cost a lot... I don't have a problem with that. I also think it is a good idea to keep a relationship with a printer that produces good quality work.
The previous poster said that $3-4 would cover all the costs including printing, and that's manifestly false if the printing alone costs that much.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Yes, let's make everything fucking free. Books should be free. Operating systems should be free. Let's make it all free so none of us have any jobs. Face it, between fucking exporting jobs to India and this free everything bullshit, we are contracting our economy. We don't make money by saving it, we make it by spending it and creating new opportunities.
Fuck Open Source Operating System and Text books.
How's that.
Look, our big software houses have made it with jobs for everyone until a bunch of dickless wonder open source freaks led by some greasy, long haired piece of crap decided that everything should be free. OK, so how many software companies are making it in this Bazaar. Fucking almost none of them. Whoa, good track record man. Fuck this. It's so stupid. This whole movement is basically a bunch of cheap fucks who want everything free. Whoopie, that's good for everyone. Not. The ones who can take advantage of this are large os vendors like ibm who now have free slave labor like RMS and his crew. Now, let's do the same thing to text books. That would be great. Nobody will make any money. That's good isn't it. We don't need all those evil guys who make books. Damn book delivery people. Damn writers. Damn printers. Damn people who for the last few hundred years have made sure we have books for our population to be come educated. Oh, well. You're all right. Let's just throw away those deadbeat thugs just like all those evil software companies. OSS freaks just annoy the fucking shit out of me.
Thank you and fuck you all
The lecturer had made all the assignments as a suite of programs (ie Excel spreadsheets) and we were required to pay for a license (ie piece of paper) that said we were allowed to do our assignments.
(Not only was it an absolute ripoff, the spreadsheets were riddled with bugs).
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
There is a company that more or less does this already--Dover.
They specialize in books that have been out of print for some years. They usually have a quite excellent selection, and their prices are almost always under $25. Most of their math or science books I've looked at at amazon tend to be 4-5 stars and 20-30% off list! It's really a cheap way to build an amazing library.
Their calculus section for example is quite extensive, and I see several undergrad textbooks. While the books are paperback, the paper is not thin and flimsy, and none of my Dover editions have fallen apart.
There are public domain textbooks. Just do a search. http://www.theassayer.org has quite a collection of free books, including many textbooks. There is also the wikibooks project for collaborative textbook writing.
tomo
So if the public domain textbooks exist, the next logical question is why they are not being used as official course materials? At the K-12 level it would save school districts (and thus taxpayers) a lot of money. And at the college level, it would save students money.
MIT seems to actually understand that their value proposition involves much more than the raw course materials, and that it will not hurt them to actually give course materials away, thus their OpenCourseWare program. This has more potential for improving education than almost any other initiative I've heard of.
Because of the rising textbook prices, as a college student myself, I thought it might be a good idea to make a website where everyone can buy and sell used books. So I decided to create GetMyBooks.com.
There's no place like localhost
The CalPIRG line item asks if the student wants it or not. It does not explain to the student that PIRG groups are radical left wing organizations that oppose the right of students to self-defense, that want to eliminate the ability of students to choose to eat affordable and nourishing genetically engineered food, that oppose animal research for AIDS cures, that fund opposition to malaria abatement programs worldwide (causing milltions of deaths), and which are distinctly against letting property owners decide how to use their own property. Truth in advertising cuts both ways, but groups like CalPIRG and their allies don't like it when the shoe is on the other foot.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
What we need is for some universities to start an open source electronic textbook project. Differernt experts could contribute different portions of the text, depending upon their area of expertise. There might be several different versions of a chapter to choose from, with the instructor choosing whichever ones he/she thinks most appropriate.
FHSST
we are nearly ready to release the section on physics to the world :-D
we also have sections on maths, chemisty and biology in the pipeline.
Yes, but think of all the fundamental changes in Calculus that take place each year
... :)
Well, let's see, there was Dirac's bra-ket notation (makes quantum mechanics-related integrations MUCH easier to comprehend and do) and, uh, uh,
My undergrad calculus text was obsoleted at the end of the year by a 'new' edition (typo fix, new problems, new cover). Yuck.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton