When you can convince 18-year old airheads to take on massive debt in the form of student loans to buy your product, the sky is the limit.
Dude. You have to buy the textbook. It’s a scam, and it’s been running for a very long time. My pet peeve is when the prof tells you to buy the fourth edition when you have the third, and the only difference between them is a few words.
I see lots of book resellers at garage sales scooping up college textbooks because they can score some good returns if they are just one or 2 “editions” old.
It’s such a scam how students are bilked for those things. But when they pay with it from a “unlimited” bucket of cash, then why not take advantage of suckers?
Why not? Government issues blank checks for what they call education. It doesn’t even matter if most the students shouldn’t be anywhere near a four year college.
Professional books are even more expensive. A required textbook for our curriculum was $700 back in 1979. WB Saunders owned us.
Ipads and other tablets are readily available, can be updated instantly, and don’t require a personal U-haul backpack to lug around.
They’re still not worth what they were in 1960
I still have some college texts from ‘77 that show $2 but, of course, they were used. If I couldn’t get them used (several years used), I’d check them out of the univ library. Today’s texts can never be used again because students have to have a new computer disc to get into their prof’s website. It’s all a scam. Someone is getting kickbacks.
I remember spending under $100 for all my textbooks per semester back in the late 1970’s except for one neuroanatomy textbook that was $100 all by itself. Boy, did we complain about that.
Now, textbooks that should cost more than $25 cost well over $100. Then the kids have to buy access to some website to do homework online. Total rip off.
I try to use free e-books available through the school library or books that don’t change editions every year or two to try to save the kids some bucks, but sometimes I’m forced to use the book school has selected.
Biggest racket going.
Buy the book, quickly scan it, return it within the time window for full refund.
It’s a great thing the federal government intervened to keep college costs under control. Just imagine how bad it would be without central planning. Why, colleges would have to compete and consumers would be looking after their own money instead of groveling for more government “free” money.
College is bound to cost less when the government makes it totally free.
/s
I’ve had some classes where I barely needed the textbook.
I’m going to start buying used on the internet in the future.
The education-industrial complex
One of my math professors allowed older versions of the “required” book. He said he had intended to write/publish a math text book for the sole purpose of sticking with that particular edition every year until he was told he would have to periodically “update” with new editions.
The one thing my students do get out of the standard textbook publishing model is that it makes for a good example in my class on basic economics.
I payed $65 for a used construction book then which was a fortune. That is about what I got paid for wages my first month in the Army.
Every professor’s dream is to write his own textbook and force several generations of students to but it.
So has the price of a candy bar.