My son is taking a course at a local college, where the department assigned a $140 "custom" loose-leaf packet (basically a few chapters printed from a textbook)

My son is taking a course at a local college, where the department assigned a $140 "custom" loose-leaf packet (basically a few chapters printed from a textbook) with "access codes" to some damned online thing. The class asked the instructor, who said: "Access codes? No, you don't need those. And a $40 past edition of the text will be just fine."