3 ms·

I've used the IA library a few times, sometimes for textbooks. I wonder if the publishers aren't just trying to do this in the name of keeping control of their

I've used the IA library a few times, sometimes for textbooks. I wonder if the publishers aren't just trying to do this in the name of keeping control of their lucrative student textbook market (a lot of textbooks can be loaned out via IA, and they're all ridiculously overpriced, i.e. $150 for a book that has minimal value and yet is required to complete the coursework). It's really kind of pathetic, all the mechanisms the system has created to extract wealth from students and their parents. If you wanted to create evidence for the argument that investment capitalism is essentially parasitic, the whole 'higher education' program we've got in the USA could well be Exhibit A (Exhibit B being the health care program).

kelnos 4y ago
Textbooks are such a racket. Way overpriced for what they are, and then the resale market is often nonexistent, as new editions (which add/change very little, but professors will end up requiring) come out all the time and make the older ones worth nothing.
- tadfisher 4y ago
  I was poor in college, and couldn't afford the (up to) $250 per textbook. So, I cheated. I found the previous edition for cheap on Amazon, and looked up answers to the work sections on some cheating sites. I didn't do it for the answers, though; I did it to reverse-engineer the new question numbers. As in, the only difference between a $40 book and a $250 book was that the publisher had randomized the question order in the work sections. The worst one by far was one I could only find in Mandarin. Google Translate helped a ton, but it was missing about half of the questions, so I ended up photocopying part of a classmate's textbook to get them. This actually landed me in the Dean's office; apparently our library had a strict policy prohibiting the photocopying of textbooks. Luckily the dean was understanding, but I'll never forget the lesson: capitalism is a fucking bitch sometimes, and to play clean you have to be willing to get dirty.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > Luckily the dean was understanding Actual educators probably hate this shit almost as much as students do. Unauthorized learning should be not a punishable offense. I assume the professors who insist on the newest editions of textbooks are either getting kickbacks (certainly true when they wrote the book) or they were forced to by the school's policy and someone higher up is getting paid by publishers.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      > * assume the professors who insist on the newest editions of textbooks are either getting kickbacks [...] or they were forced to by the school's policy and someone higher up is getting paid by publishers.* Or maybe for logistical reasons? The latest edition will of course be easily available (though expensive). Older editions might not be easy to come by. And allowing any old edition would mean it wouldn't be possible to assign exercises from the book, since the might differ in subtle ways, or just have a different order. While these problems aren't insurmountable, they would make things much more difficult.
      - account42 4y ago
        They could use a different texbook that doesn't pull this kind of bs or even not use a textbook at all. I never needed a single textbook for University (CS degree in Germany) - lectures typically had the professor's manuscript that you could buy for pretty much cost-to-print or just download as a PDF somewhere or you could just take notes in lectures. Exercise questions were provided directly and for most courses not even part of the final grade anyway. Making students pay a high tuition fee and then still making them buy additional material needed for the course is insane. It really doesn't have to be this way.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    Any university where the "teaching" involves just answering questions in a book you can just buy is a scam. I can get that for, at most, the cost of the book on my own. I don't need to pay 4-6 figures for that as well as still buying the book. I don't think I ever was assigned to answer questions from a published textbook for credit at university. If we had such question-based assignments, the questions were written by the lecturer to fit the course material. We were recommended to get certain books, but they were never required to complete the course.
autoexec 4y ago
> If you wanted to create evidence for the argument that investment capitalism is essentially parasitic, the whole 'higher education' program we've got in the USA could well be Exhibit A Copyright law itself is a prime example of how allowing greed to go unchecked is hurting us all. It started out as a great idea, but it's been perverted into something that does the literal opposite of what it was put in place to accomplish. Copyright law today hurts creators, and impedes innovation and the creation of new creative works while heavily and increasingly restricting the public's access to existing works. Sadly our politicians are even less willing to reform copyright law than they are to place limits on the greed that's allowed to hurt us collectively in the higher education system. At least students today are getting ineffectual lip service about student loan forgiveness.

kelnos 4y ago

Textbooks are such a racket. Way overpriced for what they are, and then the resale market is often nonexistent, as new editions (which add/change very little, but professors will end up requiring) come out all the time and make the older ones worth nothing.

tadfisher 4y ago
I was poor in college, and couldn't afford the (up to) $250 per textbook. So, I cheated. I found the previous edition for cheap on Amazon, and looked up answers to the work sections on some cheating sites. I didn't do it for the answers, though; I did it to reverse-engineer the new question numbers. As in, the only difference between a $40 book and a $250 book was that the publisher had randomized the question order in the work sections. The worst one by far was one I could only find in Mandarin. Google Translate helped a ton, but it was missing about half of the questions, so I ended up photocopying part of a classmate's textbook to get them. This actually landed me in the Dean's office; apparently our library had a strict policy prohibiting the photocopying of textbooks. Luckily the dean was understanding, but I'll never forget the lesson: capitalism is a fucking bitch sometimes, and to play clean you have to be willing to get dirty.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Luckily the dean was understanding Actual educators probably hate this shit almost as much as students do. Unauthorized learning should be not a punishable offense. I assume the professors who insist on the newest editions of textbooks are either getting kickbacks (certainly true when they wrote the book) or they were forced to by the school's policy and someone higher up is getting paid by publishers.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > * assume the professors who insist on the newest editions of textbooks are either getting kickbacks [...] or they were forced to by the school's policy and someone higher up is getting paid by publishers.* Or maybe for logistical reasons? The latest edition will of course be easily available (though expensive). Older editions might not be easy to come by. And allowing any old edition would mean it wouldn't be possible to assign exercises from the book, since the might differ in subtle ways, or just have a different order. While these problems aren't insurmountable, they would make things much more difficult.
    - account42 4y ago
      They could use a different texbook that doesn't pull this kind of bs or even not use a textbook at all. I never needed a single textbook for University (CS degree in Germany) - lectures typically had the professor's manuscript that you could buy for pretty much cost-to-print or just download as a PDF somewhere or you could just take notes in lectures. Exercise questions were provided directly and for most courses not even part of the final grade anyway. Making students pay a high tuition fee and then still making them buy additional material needed for the course is insane. It really doesn't have to be this way.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Any university where the "teaching" involves just answering questions in a book you can just buy is a scam. I can get that for, at most, the cost of the book on my own. I don't need to pay 4-6 figures for that as well as still buying the book. I don't think I ever was assigned to answer questions from a published textbook for credit at university. If we had such question-based assignments, the questions were written by the lecturer to fit the course material. We were recommended to get certain books, but they were never required to complete the course.

autoexec 4y ago

> If you wanted to create evidence for the argument that investment capitalism is essentially parasitic, the whole 'higher education' program we've got in the USA could well be Exhibit A Copyright law itself is a prime example of how allowing greed to go unchecked is hurting us all. It started out as a great idea, but it's been perverted into something that does the literal opposite of what it was put in place to accomplish. Copyright law today hurts creators, and impedes innovation and the creation of new creative works while heavily and increasingly restricting the public's access to existing works. Sadly our politicians are even less willing to reform copyright law than they are to place limits on the greed that's allowed to hurt us collectively in the higher education system. At least students today are getting ineffectual lip service about student loan forgiveness.