Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Then how are academics supposed to make money off of their poorly written, poorly circulated texts?
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.
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
how much in total? $250
So, you failed your first little microeconomics test then.
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
Seriously, it's a good racket they have going. Hmmm... maybe I should get into it.
A student was in the news a few years ago for setting up his own part-time bookstore. Custom ordering cheaper foreign editions if I remember. The college was not amused.
You may find that your college will extend to you an offer you cannot refuse if you deem to attempt the same.
I paid more for books this semester than I did for freakin' tuition!
What is your penile percentile?
And your degree isn't worth the paper its printed on. Or do they give that to you in PDF form as well?
Douglas P. Price
For a $100 textbook, students sometimes pay $5 per page they read during the semester.
I tried calculating how much I paid last semester per actual page read, but I got a divide-by-zero error.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
At least you had a library to close. When I went to school we had to write our own textbooks. An this was on a pdp-11 with troff even.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Wow...
That was a pretty shitty story...
The what now?
Yeah, I loved it when they released a new edition of my calculus textbook at the start of my course, meaning I couldn't buy any used ones, and at the end of my course, meaning I couldn't sell the one I had. It's so important for them to get a new edition out there, what with all the radical earth-shattering changes that have been made to mathematics in the last few years. [/sarcasm]
Jeez... you fellows lack imagination. Imagine all the money you could have saved on toilet paper (just watch out for paper cuts). But the cake is: imagine running into your proffesor and letting him/her know what the book he/she wrote was good for.
"Yes, prof. I still use it. In fact, sometimes I refer to it twice a day. It's been a real life saver a couple of times".
No sig
For god's sake, don't use a double negative when you have something inflammatory to say. I don't know whether I should flame you or agree with you.