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Textbook Math: Students Avoid High Campus Prices, Buy Books Online
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | January 13, 2020 | Megan Zogby

Posted on 01/13/2020 5:57:07 AM PST by karpov

As college textbook prices have increased 88 percent since 2006, education reformers wonder how universities can make books more affordable. One simple thing they could do is to stop selling textbooks with absurdly high mark-ups, the difference between the cost incurred by the bookstore for textbooks and the price at which they’re sold. While some progress has been made within the UNC system, much room for improvement remains.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, for example, signed a contract with Barnes and Noble in 2009 to merge its university bookstore with Barnes and Noble. That conjunction promised students lower book prices, bringing down the mark-up from 23 percent to 18 percent. However, merging the bookstore has meant that students still pay higher prices than they would if they bought books from an online competitor or the book publisher. The rationale for the merger may have been affordability, but textbooks remain expensive for students who trust UNC-Charlotte’s bookstore to offer the best price.

When students feel they’ve been overcharged, they take to social media to let the bookstore know. On the Barnes and Noble UNCC Facebook page, one student left a review describing how the bookstore charged him $115 to rent a used textbook—which he found on Amazon for $15. “Barnes and Noble needs to be boycotted for exploiting college students for insane profits. I will never spend a dime there again,” he wrote. Another student left a review stating that the bookstore sold an access code for his textbook for $96, but he discovered that the code was available through the publisher for $55. Yet another student left a negative review, writing that bookstore employees told him that he could return books on a certain day, and then refused to accept his books when he came back.

(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Education
KEYWORDS: college; textbooks
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To: pepsi_junkie
I taught Management 101 at a university for a few years. I used same text and edition as the prior professor. It made my job easier and saved students money buying used books.

A few reasons textbooks cost a lot: 1) The publishers create lots of materials for the teachers — quizzes, tests, videos, PowerPoint slides, case studies, online materials, etc. 2) There are often separate teacher editions of the textbook 3) The publishers give free sample textbooks to the professors (I sold them online, making several hundred dollars) 4) The authors get paid.

For most courses the content in a 3 year old textbook is fine. The biggest problem is the tests and assignments get into leaked.

21 posted on 01/13/2020 7:12:43 AM PST by The Truth Will Make You Free
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To: Cowboy Bob

It’s a scam. Everyone up and down the line gets rich off daddy’s wallet. There is no reason to require new textbooks with a CD which only allows one student to sign up on. That CD charge to submit homework should be included with tuition.

Back in the day, I bought used-used-used books for a couple dollars. Or used the library copy. Or used texts my parents still had. The only thing that had been updated from my parents’ Bio and Chem textbooks were the pictures from black and white to color. The content hadn’t been changed. Chaucer and Shakespeare haven’t updated their works.


22 posted on 01/13/2020 7:15:13 AM PST by bgill
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To: GingisK; TontoKowalski

See post 16.


23 posted on 01/13/2020 7:17:36 AM PST by Lizavetta
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To: karpov

Back in 1967, when I was a budding freshman at an Iowa University (Drake), I could buy an entire year’s worth of textbooks for under $90. And those were new books, which the bookstore would buy back for 50% at the end of the 2 semesters.


24 posted on 01/13/2020 7:23:36 AM PST by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: karpov

I bought the earlier editions when I went back to school. $10 vs $200 new.

Now some schools are requiring the purchase of text plus online problem sets. You can’t buy used problem sets. You can’t buy problem sets without text. You can’t get credit for assignments without them. You can choose to buy printed text, or save a few dollars buying the ebook, but the ebook expires after a year.

Electronic publishing ought to save students money, but the publishers are smart bastards.


25 posted on 01/13/2020 7:35:40 AM PST by heartwood (Someone has to play devil's advocate.)
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To: karpov

College is about 90% worthless anymore. It’s a con.


26 posted on 01/13/2020 7:43:13 AM PST by WKUHilltopper
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To: Cowboy Bob

It’s because Calculus completely changes every year! ;p


27 posted on 01/13/2020 7:51:13 AM PST by fuzzylogic (welfare state = sharing of poor moral choices among everybody)
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To: TontoKowalski

Could be that the material needed an update. But, as Christians, we are taught to assume that all others are turds.


28 posted on 01/13/2020 8:05:50 AM PST by GingisK
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To: karpov

I thought teaching math had been outlawed since it’s racist!


29 posted on 01/13/2020 8:06:03 AM PST by Savage Beast (The curse of intelligence is having to watch the morons try everything you know won't work.)
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To: Lizavetta

Oh, by the way. Teachers and professors are not allowed to charge anything for materials they create for class. The fees charged for those materials are levied by the publisher and the the university book store. It wouldn’t be fair to make the teacher pay for the bindings, would it?


30 posted on 01/13/2020 8:09:09 AM PST by GingisK
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To: karpov

College textbooks are a racket and always have been.

Most textbooks issue new editions every few years and professors (who are in on the racket) require students to get the most recent edition. In only a few subject, such as modern history or advanced engineering, do textbooks need to be updated every few years and that could easily be done with supplements. Other subjects, like undergraduate calculus courses, have not changed a hell of a lot over the past few hundred years.

When I was in college back in the 1970s, I always hit the bookstores early to try to find good copies of used textbooks. It really pissed me off when they came out with new editions so I could not buy used ones.

Of course, now most college textbooks are ebooks (with DRM to prevent copying), so your only options are to rent copies for up to $200 per book per semester, or pirate them.


31 posted on 01/13/2020 8:19:25 AM PST by Bubba_Leroy (The Obamanation has ended!)
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To: karpov
We got hammered when our first son went off to college and we dutifullly ordered up all his required and recommended materials through B&N, which had a contract with his university. We learned: 1) Not all recommended materials are really necessary. Our sons waited to purchase some of the items that didn't look critical and usually decided not to buy them at all; 2) Used books are available for far less through Amazon and other used book sources (avoid the school store even for used); 3) In most cases, the previous edition is just fine and profs will usually verify this if asked politely; 4) Check around the dorms at the end of the semester. Freshmen and sophomore students sell, give away or throw away their introductory textbooks. Our sons retrieved a few books from around the trash bins 5) Sometimes you're just stuck buying the full price update because of updated access codes, problem sets, lab safety gear, etc.

When I was teaching high school I advised my college-bound seniors to tread carefully with required book purchases. High school textbooks also get updated every few years whether they need it or not. The publishers limit online access, typically to about 6 years. Our admin usually looked to replace book sets to maintain digital access and also to show parents that they were using nice new materials, justifying tuition increases.

32 posted on 01/13/2020 8:43:03 AM PST by Think free or die
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To: GingisK
No, nor the students.

Let them get the money from their fabulous endowments or from cutting out useless basket weaving classes or eliminating administrative jobs in inclusion, diversity, or assistant to the assistant to the dean, etc.

33 posted on 01/13/2020 8:49:34 AM PST by Lizavetta
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To: karpov

I know a place that is even cheaper than Amazon if you can find the book within its site. I will tell you but I do not own or work for the site nor do I currently have an account on the website. However, I found some of the materials very interesting. The site does not just cover textbooks, it covers a wide array of text, audio, video and other stuff. Its an organization that goes by archive with a dot and the first three letters of the word organization after the dot and archive.

With an account there you can check out books and other material. You can even find old cd-rom images of various operating systems etc. The other day i was looking for a book on basic electronics and found a plethora of materials available. The hardest decision was which one to check out to read.


34 posted on 01/13/2020 11:07:21 AM PST by zaxtres
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To: Lizavetta
No, nor the students

Of course, the students. They are the ones who enrolled in the course in order to enrich their own lives in the first place. It is not the responsibility of anyone else to provide educational enrichment, save the parents.

35 posted on 01/13/2020 12:15:13 PM PST by GingisK
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To: karpov

Gary Busey in “Foolin’ Around”
Bookstore scene.
https://youtu.be/Pq6DUOiiHuk?t=186


36 posted on 01/13/2020 1:08:22 PM PST by minnesota_bound (homeless guy. He just has more money....)
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To: Lizavetta
Equally disgusting are professors whose required textbooks are the ones he/she wrote. I remember that from back in the '80s

Even worse are the ones that have a special edition of a common textbook made up just for that school, so you have to buy it on campus. Only the problems are different. I saved buckets of cash by buying my kids' books online whenever possible.

37 posted on 01/13/2020 8:17:49 PM PST by Some Fat Guy in L.A. (Still bitterly clinging to rational thought despite its unfashionability)
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To: karpov

The ever increasing cost of books is a big reason textbooks get pirated more and more over the past 20 years, it’s also the main reason pirate sites just for books took off. These books would be in PDF form.


38 posted on 01/14/2020 7:13:12 AM PST by ChuckR163
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