7 ms·

Freshman year, first semester, I paid $1100 for books, and then we only actually used one of them more than slightly. I still have them all. One of them was a D

Freshman year, first semester, I paid $1100 for books, and then we only actually used one of them more than slightly. I still have them all. One of them was a Discrete Mathematics book that cost $250. We used it twice to do a "reading assignment" and since the class was only taught by the teacher who wanted this book just this one semester, the school store wouldn't buy it back at the end of the semester. It still creaks when I open it. I was a first generation college student, my tuition and living expenses were funded mostly by a scholarship (covered all of my tuition and about 30% of living expenses) and a private student loan covered the remainder. My cash flow was strictly negative and the surprised $1100 bill right at the start was extraordinarily unappreciated and the fact it went to such comically little use was just spitting in your face. So the subsequent 7 semesters I paid $0 for books, which still left me with an average cost of books at $137/semester. Ridiculous.

watwut 3y ago
Wouldn't it be fair use if the class just copied content for those two assignments? It is using only small portion of the whole thing after all.
- sowbug 3y ago
  You need to five-whys this before suggesting a solution. Start by asking whether whoever was in charge of requiring the $250 textbook benefited personally from its purchase.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    It's more likely they were lazy and conformed to the status quo. You know, the old never attribute to malice what is easily explained by ignorance.
    - rwnspace 3y ago
      Depends, I took economics modules at University, and that was the only subject where the mandatory course textbook was co-written by the module leader. Well, co-written is strong: they added ten exercise questions and some call out boxes to the default Pearson textbook. Naturally, it was 40% more expensive.
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      School and professor dependent. I had a few professors at UVA who authored the book being used in class. I also had a few who made copies of the chapters they wanted from whatever books and had the library hold those copies for us. We would just check them out normally, make our own copy (or read, take notes) and return for the next person.
    - jayd16 3y ago
      Is it more likely? The most overpriced books I was required to buy were the ones the professor wrote.
submeta 3y ago
I would have gone to the book store, fotographed the two chapters. - When I was a university student, our professor would copy relevant chapters and hand them to us (in Berlin). We would only buy those books we used extensively.
- aerostable_slug 3y ago
  That happens in the Unites States as well, especially when the professor doesn't stand to profit from book sales (and/or the author is long-dead) and the amount of reading is relatively small. I received a number of these kinds of stapled "books" over my undergraduate years. This included some from the author of one of the books in question. I'm not sure it's fully on the up-and-up given intellectual property laws, but life is full of gray areas. At the time piracy was not the option it is today (no libgen or torrent sites, Usenet wasn't much help, and the web was sparkly-new), so those breaks were very much appreciated — especially for my classes in Attic Greek, where the relevant textbooks were now rare (though once very common) and unlikely to get much use outside of the class. We did have to buy the Loeb editions of a bunch of original texts (Greek on one side, translation on the other), but I have no issue with that, and they were readily available on the used market. I still have them.
8organicbits 3y ago
I also remember an expensive discrete math book. I came home for the holidays and was doing some exercises when my dad found his copy from when he was at university. Most sections were word for word idential, but the problems were all different. His had a chapter on Fortran too.
- gonehome 3y ago
  I was told they scramble the order of problems so they can keep the books the same but force you to buy new editions in order to have the same problem numbers at what gets assigned. Basically minimizing cost to extort more cash.
  - xur17 3y ago
    I still remember my math teacher that specifically told us to get a certain version of the textbook, and the version he specified was 1 or 2 editions old. Ended up costing me something like $20 to buy used vs $100 new.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    I had a class where the textbook did that. I always would get last year's books to save more than a few coins, but the professor of this class would go through the problems in-class, and they were all different from what was in my book. I went to his office hours to understand why the problems he went over were different from the ones in my book, and he immediately lectured "Ahhhh you must have bought an older book from the bargain bin. I require this year's book in my class and this is how I know who failed to pay for the correct book." The professor was the author of the book, of course. It was at that point it sunk in what a huge grift higher-education was. I forgot the professor's name, but if you're reading this, fuck you, Dr. Shithead (and all the other Shithead professors who do this).
    - zarzavat 3y ago
      Incredible that this kind of corruption is tolerated in the credentials industry, most other industries would not tolerate someone making money from customers that way. Can you imagine going to McDonalds and the guy won’t serve you your drink unless you buy a cup from his side business?
andruby 3y ago
I studied a semester abroad (Erasmus) in Portugal and I was so surprised that the expectation there was to get the course book photocopied. The university had a copy room where you pay for a literal copied version of the book that someone made with a xerox machine.
- sitkack 3y ago
  In the 90s in the US, for more hard science and math courses, the course was taught against course notes that you needed to buy from one of the many print shops next to the university. This was spiral bound, often a couple hundred pages and costing 20-40$ because that is how much a short run print job costed. These were made by the instructors. For courses where a book was required, you could check a book out from the reserve and photocopy the whole thing on one of the many high speed photocopiers on campus that all shared a linked card system, so you didn't have to use coins.
  - tenacious_tuna 3y ago
    I graduated from a US university in 2018 and my favorite math course was taught by a professor who told us at the start that the textbook was just his course notes, which he provided a PDF for, and we were welcome to (and encouraged) use the text as open-notes in our exams so long as we had a printed version of the notes. The class proceeded to be one of my favorite math classes, and it was so incredible to have a text that was deeply integrated to the course--because it was just straight up what he lectured from. I wish more of my courses had been that way.
    - soperj 3y ago
      There are teachers who care, and then everyone else.
- spike021 3y ago
  I went to San Jose state university a decade ago. It wasn't unexpected to find that some books could be bought there similarly where you pay for basically a photocopy bound with a spiral binding.
LanceH 3y ago
> Freshman year, first semester, I paid $1100 for books, and then we only actually used one of them more than slightly. This really bothers me. Universities hold themselves up as virtuous. Then students hire them to provide to provide an education. Instead of being agents for the students, the students are instead treated like a captive market. There is a very real conflict of interest in universities profiting off textbooks they "require" while being hired to provide a class. I really don't get how any of this is acceptable. Then you get required to take an ethics class as part of your degree.
- Firmwarrior 3y ago
  It's complete bullshit You can now comfortably afford to hire a staff of PhD students to tutor you 1on1 in every subject you want to learn more cheaply than going to a university. So where the FUCK is all that money going?
  - ehvatum 3y ago
    > So where the FUCK is all that money going? Please be aware that higher education is a massive dumping ground for the lowest-performing segment of the politically-connected managerial class, who are too cowardly and lazy to run for elected office, and too stupid and impulsive to make it in industry. Academia is perfect, for them: a gigantic stage for demonstrating moral superiority and hiring friends, with no fundamentals that matter at all.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - miked85 3y ago
      Totally agree. I only had one professor who had any idea how things work in the industry, and she went back to it within a couple years. I'm not saying there's no value at a university, but most of it is a waste of time and money.
  - notimetorelax 3y ago

watwut 3y ago

Wouldn't it be fair use if the class just copied content for those two assignments? It is using only small portion of the whole thing after all.

sowbug 3y ago
You need to five-whys this before suggesting a solution. Start by asking whether whoever was in charge of requiring the $250 textbook benefited personally from its purchase.
- giantg2 3y ago
  It's more likely they were lazy and conformed to the status quo. You know, the old never attribute to malice what is easily explained by ignorance.
  - rwnspace 3y ago
    Depends, I took economics modules at University, and that was the only subject where the mandatory course textbook was co-written by the module leader. Well, co-written is strong: they added ten exercise questions and some call out boxes to the default Pearson textbook. Naturally, it was 40% more expensive.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    School and professor dependent. I had a few professors at UVA who authored the book being used in class. I also had a few who made copies of the chapters they wanted from whatever books and had the library hold those copies for us. We would just check them out normally, make our own copy (or read, take notes) and return for the next person.
  - jayd16 3y ago
    Is it more likely? The most overpriced books I was required to buy were the ones the professor wrote.

submeta 3y ago

I would have gone to the book store, fotographed the two chapters. - When I was a university student, our professor would copy relevant chapters and hand them to us (in Berlin). We would only buy those books we used extensively.

aerostable_slug 3y ago
That happens in the Unites States as well, especially when the professor doesn't stand to profit from book sales (and/or the author is long-dead) and the amount of reading is relatively small. I received a number of these kinds of stapled "books" over my undergraduate years. This included some from the author of one of the books in question. I'm not sure it's fully on the up-and-up given intellectual property laws, but life is full of gray areas. At the time piracy was not the option it is today (no libgen or torrent sites, Usenet wasn't much help, and the web was sparkly-new), so those breaks were very much appreciated — especially for my classes in Attic Greek, where the relevant textbooks were now rare (though once very common) and unlikely to get much use outside of the class. We did have to buy the Loeb editions of a bunch of original texts (Greek on one side, translation on the other), but I have no issue with that, and they were readily available on the used market. I still have them.

8organicbits 3y ago

I also remember an expensive discrete math book. I came home for the holidays and was doing some exercises when my dad found his copy from when he was at university. Most sections were word for word idential, but the problems were all different. His had a chapter on Fortran too.

gonehome 3y ago
I was told they scramble the order of problems so they can keep the books the same but force you to buy new editions in order to have the same problem numbers at what gets assigned. Basically minimizing cost to extort more cash.
- xur17 3y ago
  I still remember my math teacher that specifically told us to get a certain version of the textbook, and the version he specified was 1 or 2 editions old. Ended up costing me something like $20 to buy used vs $100 new.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  I had a class where the textbook did that. I always would get last year's books to save more than a few coins, but the professor of this class would go through the problems in-class, and they were all different from what was in my book. I went to his office hours to understand why the problems he went over were different from the ones in my book, and he immediately lectured "Ahhhh you must have bought an older book from the bargain bin. I require this year's book in my class and this is how I know who failed to pay for the correct book." The professor was the author of the book, of course. It was at that point it sunk in what a huge grift higher-education was. I forgot the professor's name, but if you're reading this, fuck you, Dr. Shithead (and all the other Shithead professors who do this).
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    Incredible that this kind of corruption is tolerated in the credentials industry, most other industries would not tolerate someone making money from customers that way. Can you imagine going to McDonalds and the guy won’t serve you your drink unless you buy a cup from his side business?

andruby 3y ago

I studied a semester abroad (Erasmus) in Portugal and I was so surprised that the expectation there was to get the course book photocopied. The university had a copy room where you pay for a literal copied version of the book that someone made with a xerox machine.

sitkack 3y ago
In the 90s in the US, for more hard science and math courses, the course was taught against course notes that you needed to buy from one of the many print shops next to the university. This was spiral bound, often a couple hundred pages and costing 20-40$ because that is how much a short run print job costed. These were made by the instructors. For courses where a book was required, you could check a book out from the reserve and photocopy the whole thing on one of the many high speed photocopiers on campus that all shared a linked card system, so you didn't have to use coins.
- tenacious_tuna 3y ago
  I graduated from a US university in 2018 and my favorite math course was taught by a professor who told us at the start that the textbook was just his course notes, which he provided a PDF for, and we were welcome to (and encouraged) use the text as open-notes in our exams so long as we had a printed version of the notes. The class proceeded to be one of my favorite math classes, and it was so incredible to have a text that was deeply integrated to the course--because it was just straight up what he lectured from. I wish more of my courses had been that way.
  - soperj 3y ago
    There are teachers who care, and then everyone else.
spike021 3y ago
I went to San Jose state university a decade ago. It wasn't unexpected to find that some books could be bought there similarly where you pay for basically a photocopy bound with a spiral binding.

LanceH 3y ago

> Freshman year, first semester, I paid $1100 for books, and then we only actually used one of them more than slightly. This really bothers me. Universities hold themselves up as virtuous. Then students hire them to provide to provide an education. Instead of being agents for the students, the students are instead treated like a captive market. There is a very real conflict of interest in universities profiting off textbooks they "require" while being hired to provide a class. I really don't get how any of this is acceptable. Then you get required to take an ethics class as part of your degree.

Firmwarrior 3y ago
It's complete bullshit You can now comfortably afford to hire a staff of PhD students to tutor you 1on1 in every subject you want to learn more cheaply than going to a university. So where the FUCK is all that money going?
- ehvatum 3y ago
  > So where the FUCK is all that money going? Please be aware that higher education is a massive dumping ground for the lowest-performing segment of the politically-connected managerial class, who are too cowardly and lazy to run for elected office, and too stupid and impulsive to make it in industry. Academia is perfect, for them: a gigantic stage for demonstrating moral superiority and hiring friends, with no fundamentals that matter at all.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - miked85 3y ago
    Totally agree. I only had one professor who had any idea how things work in the industry, and she went back to it within a couple years. I'm not saying there's no value at a university, but most of it is a waste of time and money.
- notimetorelax 3y ago