I was told by a local college (the Math Department Chair) that professors are not permitted to tell students that they can get their books for less online. I find that disgusting.
My son buys all of his books online an it is ridiculously cheaper than the campus bookstore.
Good for them. Universities keep charging higher and higher prices for things students don't need, or can get elsewhere, including "education." So much of what universities "provide" today has little to do with what students need to get ahead in the world, and it comes at a huge expense.
When are students going to stand up and refuse to pay for Leftist propaganda that is being shoved down their throats in the guise of education?
College Textbooks are like class rings. Total scam industry
Worst are the professors who require you to buy a textbook they wrote...
Been a scam industry for as long as I’ve been alive and sure a lot longer
My kids rented all of their’s from Cheggs.
I remember paying something like $75 for an Econ book in the early 80’s and getting $3 back when I resold it.
A textbook is $200-$300 today.
College students already know to check online bookstores like Amazon for lower prices.
But, the lower prices are still too high. So, the students rent or buy access to the digital textbook.
No matter what, the prices are highway robbery.
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.
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.
College is about 90% worthless anymore. It’s a con.
I thought teaching math had been outlawed since it’s racist!
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.
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.
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.
Gary Busey in “Foolin’ Around”
Bookstore scene.
https://youtu.be/Pq6DUOiiHuk?t=186
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.