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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?"
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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
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
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.
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.
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!
excellent point. of course, i suppose one could view this as a real-world illustration of ROI...diligent students get higher ROI WRT textbooks.
ed
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
Think $100 is bad, I had to spend over $300 for a set of books for my signals & systems class. The books were mostly useless because the professor handed out her own homework assignments rather than take them from the books. Turns out I couldn't even sell them back at the end of the term because they were going to a "new edition" which consisted of a few new figures and maybe two new pages of info.
Needless to say, the class had one hell of a bonfire to commemorate that piece of shit.
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.
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....
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.
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
You could always create your own used textbook market. Most bookstores that buy used books give next to nothing for them. I always kept my old books until the next year and sold them to the next group of students. I always got more than the bookstore offered to buy them back and the buyer got their books much cheaper than if they bought them new or even used. Plus it cuts the middleman out of the equation.
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..."
Well, if the publisher puts out a new version of the book, do you think the bookstore will be able to get the older version of the book to sell to the students even if the prof didn't want to switch? Probably not...so everyone has to move forward at the publishers insistance.
As for the prof writing the book - why is that a conflict? You are going to college to have a professor impart knowledge upon you. If you just wanted to learn what the book said, you could buy the book and read it yourself.
Would you rather have a professor that didn't care too much for the book and didn't use it that much? Or contradicted it in his lessons and tests? or someone who knows the book and it's content and it lines up with what they are teaching?
From what I remember in college, I had one professor in a compiler class who wrote the book. It wasn't a published hardcover book - looked like something the dept. secretary put together with supplies from Office Depot. Only problem was that it feel apart easy, but great book.
Another professor had written a book for a course and the department chair would not approve it for use, so he had to select another one.
Another prof chose a book that had two editions. We would primarly learn out of the edition we had to buy, but he made copies of about 100 pages out of the other edition for us because he didn't think it right we buy two books. He was an older prof that probably didn't buy into the modern methods (well, 12 years ago.)
One other class we had to buy a $66 book for it. I never did, buy my roommate did. We were told to read the first chapter and the book was never mentioned again. On "sale back", my roommate was told the professor said he wasn't gonna use that next time, so they wouldn't buy it back.
I found a great way of getting some books was to dig thought the big trash cans outside the buyback line where people would throw the books away in disgust.
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.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this time around it's not quite about power to the people. The power lies in the hands of the profs ordering the books. They need to stop rolling over on every inane change made to textbooks. (Also, IANAL so I don't know anti-trust law, but perhaps some sort of anti-trust investigation against the publishers is in order).
I agree 100% that Universities are gouging students to make a buck. At the university I graduated from (a medium sized state school) The University owned bookstore charges astronomical prices and always seems to run out all too quickly of the multitude of used books they bought back the previous semester for 10% of the price they resell them for. When an off-campus bookstore opened to provide some competition what did the University do? They moved back the date that financial aid checks were distributed. You could charge your books at the Uni bookstore and have the amount taken out of your change check when you finally got it. So, if you're an average student and dependent of financial aid to buy your books your choices are: 1. Buy the overpriced books at the Uni bookstore or 2. wait for you financial aid and get your books 5-6 weeks after classes start. Guess which one most students choose. The off campus bookstore was out of business within a year. This also effectively rules out buying books online for most students. What a racket!
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've had the opposite, where more than one of my profs was the author of the book that was used for the class, so they had even more incentive to get us to use that book. I've also had profs that photocopy appropriate sections for us though.
(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!
It's not the college that does the used book thing. The publishers are the ones that force you to buy new bundles by actually not selling the components in the bundles separately. One thing that could be done is require all publishers to sell everything that comes in a bundle separately, and at a fair price (not the same price as the bundle would have been). Then the professors and bookstores can actually choose if the bundle is really what they want, or just the main textbook.
A prof at my university wrote one of the more known microelectronic circuits book - he gave a (signed) copy of the book to all the students in his class. I've also heard of another prof who gave back profits he made (~$5 or so) to everyone in the class who had bought new copies of his textbook. So, not every prof who writes their own textbook is a bastard.
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.)
What are late charges these days? Used to .10. Even if it's .25.
.25 * 120DaysPerSemester = $30.
At the prices mentioned here, it might just make sense.
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.
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):
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.
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!"
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).
Check out this project: http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst Its a free high school science textbook project, and I think its the way to go - but then its my project
Information should be free!
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.
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.
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
The computer architecture book of Hennessy Patterson costs around $100 in the US. I got the Indian edition of the same for $5. I get all my text books from India (my friend posts them to me or sends it through someone who is on the US trip). The paper quality and the binding is not that good. But who cares about the paper quality as long as the contents are the same?
Last year I had to read The Crucible, in which many people were reasonlessly tortured and killed in witch trials, and The Grapes of Wrath, in which people were driven off their farms en masse and migrated in squalor to exploitative third-world California, where they and their children promptly started suffering from malnutrition, poor sanitation, and general despair. Both books had messages, but niether was fun to read. I'm glad that RMS could make his point with such admirable brevity that you don't have to be a masochist to read the entire story.
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
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.
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.
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..
I personally love the stuff like the packet of a new speech communication book and a subscription to an online website used for submitting homework. Only available new. Can't buy the subscription separately. Can't sell the book back even online as it's custom to Penn State; there are added chapters and a PSU specific cover. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the functionality they used on the website was a subset of that which the university's own course management website will do. So the subscription isn't really even necessary.
If they hadn't bound us into buying the subscription with the book I would have probably saved $50 on the thing.
My university library would have hung, drawn, and quartered you for that kind of thing.
They've got quite a good webpage about the way people abuse library books.
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
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
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 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?
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?
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?