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And students are being hoodwinked into buying them. The books also often include minutiae which change from edition to edition, so you have to get the nth editi
by madaxe_again 11y ago
And students are being hoodwinked into buying them. The books also often include minutiae which change from edition to edition, so you have to get the nth edition in order to take your class - because in physics, for instance, there are Q&A in the books which differ between editions.
The main book we had to get was written by two of the lecturers, and was £300. It was so half-assedly bound that you had to cut the pages open.
- harry8 11y agoname the book, author and publisher. If what you say is true they don't deserve protection.
- Thriptic 11y agoIt sounds like what they are referring to is a course reader published by their own university.
- kwhitefoot 11y agoDid you complain to the university? Which university? Sounds like a low grade institution to me. When I studied physics at Exeter in the mid 70s there was a lively trade in second hand books and I don't think that any of the books specified that they had to be the absolutely latest edition. Nor did the faculty write a book and demand that we bought it; I think that might have caused a lot of trouble then but students now seem to be more docile than we were. We mostly didn't do exercises from textbooks, we had tutors who set work so it didn't matter which edition you used so long as the contents were correct.
- madaxe_again 11y agoDurham. Definitely not low grade - was top in the country for Physics while I was there. Most tutors set work outside of books, but there were definitely a few who were rinsing students for all it was worth. Edit: seems they've gone further down the textbook route - here's their justification on the matter - https://www.dur.ac.uk/physics/students/textbooks/ https://www.dur.ac.uk/physics/students/textbooks/