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When I went to UCSD (a long time ago) the standard engineering calculus book was revised every other year, usually changing all the homework problems, destroyin

When I went to UCSD (a long time ago) the standard engineering calculus book was revised every other year, usually changing all the homework problems, destroying the used market for it. It was written by the chair of the department. In that way the professors and the book publishers had an interest in keeping the price of textbooks very high.

xur17 10y ago
I had a professor in college that explicitly told us to get an old version of the textbook. It ended up costing ~$8 on Amazon instead of $80 for the newest version. My physics class on the other hand had a book that was 'customized' for us (chapters were rearranged to prevent resale), and we had to purchase access to webassign.
- softawre 10y ago
  I am thankful that I went to college just early enough to miss this forced internet assignment crap.
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  The behaviour of US universities when it comes to text books is astonishing to me. When I studied physics in the UK in the mid seventies such behaviour would have caused massive student protests. Now there are courses in the UK that have no textbooks at all and are based entirely on laboratory work, lectures, and on line study. In fact when I studied there was no real requirement to buy books at all. Of course most of us did spend a lot on books but it was nothing compared to the amounts I regularly see mentioned on line in discussions about US unis. It was simply convenient to use the recommended book so that lecturers could refer to chapters, formulas, and figures and so on and so that when you asked your fellow students for help that you would all be on the same page so to speak. In theory you could have got by with your own lecture notes and visits to the library. I'm quite sure that my old copy of Lorrain and Corson would be just as good for EM part of a bachelor's in physics now as it was in 1975. In fact I think I'll dig it out and start to refresh my skills.
greeneggs 10y ago
One problem is that some students cheat. They develop and pass around open-source sets of answers. If the problems don't change, then students don't learn as well.
- Chaebixi 10y ago
  > One problem is that some students cheat. They develop and pass around open-source sets of answers. If the problems don't change, then students don't learn as well. The solution to that is to not revise the textbook, it's to pass out different homework handouts each semester. IMHO, the textbook problems sets should be for student practice and all the solutions should be in the back of the book (vs. just the odds).
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    >pass out different homework handouts each semester. That sounds like work, we are talking about academia here.
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      How often does Calculus change? Over the course of a few years, one could develop enough homework problems to start rotating them out each semester.
    - kesselvon 10y ago
      It's not like they write those problems. They have auto generators now, go to Khan Academy or WA and it'll spit out all the calculus problems you want
      - germinalphrase 10y ago
        I believe that auto-generation of homework/assessment elements (or the maintenance of a large corpus of previously developed assessment elements that can be curated at will) should be ubiquitous in all subject areas. Mathematics is clearly the easiest and should be available now to everyone. I suspect, however, that academic publishers would attempt to sue the pants off anyone that built such a service if it relied on user submissions of content (e.g. a professor uploads their homework assignments to the library of content and that content can be utilized by anyone else on the system).
austenallred 10y ago
We had an economics professor that had a $110 textbook with tear-out homework assignments that needed to be completed in pen. He said that he did so in order to make sure the publishing company would keep printing them, intentionally and openly ensuring there wouldn't be a used book market. His justification is in the syllabus here https://economics.byu.edu/Documents/Syllabi%20-%20broken/20135%20Kearl%20110-1.pdf https://economics.byu.edu/Documents/Syllabi%20-%20broken/201.... Looking back, and having printed a book, I'm 99% sure that's BS. Or, at best, you could print the book much cheaper yourself.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  A history course I took, the profs did the same (pair of them at the school that wrote the textbook together). Tear out assignments, I photocopied and submitted that (not marked down). But they frequently updated it so even though I took care of my book, I couldn't resell it for much anyways. The textbooks were still around $80 or so, so this did nothing to keep prices down.
  - pyre 10y ago
    > I photocopied Didn't you read the PDF!? > Photocopying of Assignments from someone else’s text is a violation of copyright laws, so please purchase your own text. You could have been sued!
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      Oh the horror! I was worth on average about $200 at the time so I guess they could've taken my lunch and rent money. I photocopied it from my own textbook and used it myself, I suspect that would've helped my case.
- deathanatos 10y ago
  > (The used book market actually drives up the price of texts – to see why, think of what would happen to car prices if used car sales were not permitted.) My best guess is he is trying to argue that if you disallowed used car sales, you'd get better economies of scale on new cars, as more would need to be produced to fill the void left my used car sales. While it might drive the price of a new car/textbook down, I still think it would drive the average amount paid by drivers/students up, which is what we really care about (as students, at least; obviously the textbook companies would love to sell more books). In fact, this seems to a case of the broken window fallacy[1] — a textbook case, one might say. ;-) (In that, if you essentially destroy the used text book's value by not using them, that this is somehow beneficial.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
username223 10y ago
Classic. When I was at UCSD (also a long time ago), I had the privilege of taking a course from a professor who used his own $70 textbook, then "taught" by reading it in front of a whiteboard. Undergrad tuition was also going up 20-30% per year at the time, for something that could only charitably be called "education." There's very little excuse to create new versions of a calculus textbook. My decades-old Thomas still works just fine.
chrismealy 10y ago
When I took econ 101 at the University of Washington there were five professors that each had their own textbook (and maybe a sixth but I never confirmed it).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sampo 10y ago
> keeping the price of textbooks very high Why don't people just scan or photocopy a textbook, if the price is too high? Do American students give even higher value for their time than the cost of a textbook?

xur17 10y ago

I had a professor in college that explicitly told us to get an old version of the textbook. It ended up costing ~$8 on Amazon instead of $80 for the newest version. My physics class on the other hand had a book that was 'customized' for us (chapters were rearranged to prevent resale), and we had to purchase access to webassign.

softawre 10y ago
I am thankful that I went to college just early enough to miss this forced internet assignment crap.
kwhitefoot 10y ago
The behaviour of US universities when it comes to text books is astonishing to me. When I studied physics in the UK in the mid seventies such behaviour would have caused massive student protests. Now there are courses in the UK that have no textbooks at all and are based entirely on laboratory work, lectures, and on line study. In fact when I studied there was no real requirement to buy books at all. Of course most of us did spend a lot on books but it was nothing compared to the amounts I regularly see mentioned on line in discussions about US unis. It was simply convenient to use the recommended book so that lecturers could refer to chapters, formulas, and figures and so on and so that when you asked your fellow students for help that you would all be on the same page so to speak. In theory you could have got by with your own lecture notes and visits to the library. I'm quite sure that my old copy of Lorrain and Corson would be just as good for EM part of a bachelor's in physics now as it was in 1975. In fact I think I'll dig it out and start to refresh my skills.

greeneggs 10y ago

One problem is that some students cheat. They develop and pass around open-source sets of answers. If the problems don't change, then students don't learn as well.

Chaebixi 10y ago
> One problem is that some students cheat. They develop and pass around open-source sets of answers. If the problems don't change, then students don't learn as well. The solution to that is to not revise the textbook, it's to pass out different homework handouts each semester. IMHO, the textbook problems sets should be for student practice and all the solutions should be in the back of the book (vs. just the odds).
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  >pass out different homework handouts each semester. That sounds like work, we are talking about academia here.
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    How often does Calculus change? Over the course of a few years, one could develop enough homework problems to start rotating them out each semester.
  - kesselvon 10y ago
    It's not like they write those problems. They have auto generators now, go to Khan Academy or WA and it'll spit out all the calculus problems you want
    - germinalphrase 10y ago
      I believe that auto-generation of homework/assessment elements (or the maintenance of a large corpus of previously developed assessment elements that can be curated at will) should be ubiquitous in all subject areas. Mathematics is clearly the easiest and should be available now to everyone. I suspect, however, that academic publishers would attempt to sue the pants off anyone that built such a service if it relied on user submissions of content (e.g. a professor uploads their homework assignments to the library of content and that content can be utilized by anyone else on the system).

austenallred 10y ago

We had an economics professor that had a $110 textbook with tear-out homework assignments that needed to be completed in pen. He said that he did so in order to make sure the publishing company would keep printing them, intentionally and openly ensuring there wouldn't be a used book market. His justification is in the syllabus here https://economics.byu.edu/Documents/Syllabi%20-%20broken/20135%20Kearl%20110-1.pdf https://economics.byu.edu/Documents/Syllabi%20-%20broken/201.... Looking back, and having printed a book, I'm 99% sure that's BS. Or, at best, you could print the book much cheaper yourself.

Jtsummers 10y ago
A history course I took, the profs did the same (pair of them at the school that wrote the textbook together). Tear out assignments, I photocopied and submitted that (not marked down). But they frequently updated it so even though I took care of my book, I couldn't resell it for much anyways. The textbooks were still around $80 or so, so this did nothing to keep prices down.
- pyre 10y ago
  > I photocopied Didn't you read the PDF!? > Photocopying of Assignments from someone else’s text is a violation of copyright laws, so please purchase your own text. You could have been sued!
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    Oh the horror! I was worth on average about $200 at the time so I guess they could've taken my lunch and rent money. I photocopied it from my own textbook and used it myself, I suspect that would've helped my case.
deathanatos 10y ago
> (The used book market actually drives up the price of texts – to see why, think of what would happen to car prices if used car sales were not permitted.) My best guess is he is trying to argue that if you disallowed used car sales, you'd get better economies of scale on new cars, as more would need to be produced to fill the void left my used car sales. While it might drive the price of a new car/textbook down, I still think it would drive the average amount paid by drivers/students up, which is what we really care about (as students, at least; obviously the textbook companies would love to sell more books). In fact, this seems to a case of the broken window fallacy[1] — a textbook case, one might say. ;-) (In that, if you essentially destroy the used text book's value by not using them, that this is somehow beneficial.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

username223 10y ago

Classic. When I was at UCSD (also a long time ago), I had the privilege of taking a course from a professor who used his own $70 textbook, then "taught" by reading it in front of a whiteboard. Undergrad tuition was also going up 20-30% per year at the time, for something that could only charitably be called "education." There's very little excuse to create new versions of a calculus textbook. My decades-old Thomas still works just fine.

chrismealy 10y ago

When I took econ 101 at the University of Washington there were five professors that each had their own textbook (and maybe a sixth but I never confirmed it).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sampo 10y ago

> keeping the price of textbooks very high Why don't people just scan or photocopy a textbook, if the price is too high? Do American students give even higher value for their time than the cost of a textbook?