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ExperienceKCC OP t1_iszjxh5 wrote

One interesting note: According to the link, student spending on course materials has actually declined by as much as 43.6% over the last 10 years.

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justalittlesus t1_iszkm73 wrote

I’m assuming it’s due to digital text. So, we still pay a lot, we just don’t own the material any more.

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Nannercorn t1_it20pkt wrote

I literally stopped by textbooks in college, we never ended up opening them, and if we did, which was maybe once in the whole semester, I just asked for pictures from someone who did have the book. Also with things like Mathlabs or whatever it's called, there really is no need for textbooks

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fizzlefist t1_it2qtt2 wrote

When I was in college in the late 00's, they had just started going all-in on the new books coming with a code for some tiny sliver of digital material that you absolutely had to have as a course requirement.

Just another grifting scheme.

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Hand-Picked-Anus t1_it3xl3u wrote

Over half the books I bought in college were singularly bought in order to open up an envelope inside the cover, read a code, log into a website, and then maybe use the book ONCE after that. The books were anything from $100-$500 each, and they'd give you like, $30 when they bought it back.

Another part of the scam was the fact that you could only get your student loans a month or two after classes had started, so if you needed books, you HAD to buy them from the college bookstore, where they were massively marked up. They would take the total out of your student loans or grants before you even got them. Everything from $2 bookmarks (a sliver of paper.) to $100 hoodies with nothing but a small IU logo on them. Packs of 5 pencils for $8, you name it.

They made sure to delay student loans so that when you borrowed materials from the college store, you paid an insane markup. The poorer student obviously get fleeced the worst.

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celestiaequestria t1_iszp8ap wrote

The publishers have put themselves in a self-defeating position. If the textbooks were $50, people would grumble and buy them. If they're $400, people are going to do everything in their power to not have to get that book. Download a PDF and pay $100 for the dumb online homework key? Still better than paying $400 for the book that'll wind up being used to line the bottom of a bird cage because it's worthless once the shrinkwrap is off.

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AdClemson t1_it36a7j wrote

They basically priced themselves out with greed. Even $50 would net them nice profit per book but they just wanted to squeeze as much money as possible from students and ended up destroying their own business in long term.

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edamcheeze t1_it3mg5i wrote

I had a professor in college who sold his textbooks at around ~$60 each and said he was getting $30k a year from it. He co-authored it with someone else and I'm sure the platform he was using took a big chunk of the profits, but even so, $30k is still a fuck ton of money. Professors who force students to buy their textbooks at several hundred dollars are absolute greedy scum.

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LurksAroundHere t1_it3w2uc wrote

On the flip side I luckily had a good professor and he encouraged his students to buy older used versions of the textbooks required for class, even going as far to bring out the old and new textbooks and flip through them to show us that they literally had the same material, just that the "updated" more expensive version had the same chapters put on different pages. Had a lot of respect for him.

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jcpainpdx t1_iszkvfx wrote

Textbook updates are a scam. In some cases, little more than the publication date is updated. Professors will often try to avoid them, unless they’ve authored the books. 😉

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MitsyEyedMourning t1_iszpy2f wrote

> unless they’ve authored the books.

Of course, because you are totally getting ass blasted and robbed ... unless it is their book.

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fizzlefist t1_it2qymj wrote

Unless it's one of the really good professors that makes their own material that gets spiral-bound and sold for $20 or less.

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Mysticpoisen t1_it48xrb wrote

I remember professors required lab manuals that they had written and spiral-bound exclusively available in the school library. $95 each, for the same list of a dozen exercises that were in it the last 10 years. Like, when the book costs $0.95 to make, and hasn't been updated in a decade, you can't upcharge 10000%, that's ridiculous.

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SyntheticRatking t1_it1tdj8 wrote

Yup. I bought a textbook prior to class exactly 1 time. The registration office flat out lied to me and told me it was required to buy all books before the start of the class or I'd be marked withdrawn on day one (my grants counted withdrawn as failed, so if I got dropped from a class or even tried to change classes, I'd fail out and lose all my funding).

Day one, I pull out the book only for the prof to say "don't buy the book, I know they tell you it's required but we won't use it except for 2 assignments and I'll print out the sections of the book you need for them." Never paid for another text book until after the class had started. In 4 years, I only actually needed 4 textbooks and 1 of them was a "you can't get the access code to the site that 100% of your assignments are on unless you buy the textbook" shills.

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Sdog1981 t1_iszyaze wrote

Because 90% of the time you never need to buy the book.

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SadPandaRage t1_it0hauz wrote

I only bought one book my last 2 years of school. Most of my classes either didn't need them or I was able to find them other ways.

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GeneralNathanJessup t1_it2rn4w wrote

I always checked the course syllabus, got the ISBN number for the book, and searched online for the international version, which was 99% the same textbook, at a fraction of the cost. About 75% less.

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brock_lee t1_iszo2vu wrote

Anecdotally, when I was in college in the 80s, I spent generally about $150 to $200 per semester on books. My kid just started his fourth year of college and literally spends about that same amount on books. I know this, because I pay for them.

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mortaneous t1_it0ytbf wrote

An anecdote fornyour anecdote, when I was in college around 20 years ago, I was spending 150-200 per Book, aside from some texts for literature and history courses, so your kid either has good teachers that know how to choose low cost course materials or they're taking courses that just don't have the typical textbooks.

I will say that I occasionally had a professor who knew we weren't going to use most of a book and just provided us photocopied excerpts from it instead of having us all buy a copy for 2 chapters and an appendix.

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open_door_policy t1_it1644a wrote

20 years ago, most of my courses after year two of university, the professors insisted that the newest edition of the book was required, as well as the three supplemental books that were necessary, even though they would never be directly referenced during the class.

I'm sure it was purely coincidental that they were the authors of the books. We were free to take up any complaints with the department head (who was the instructor), or the ethics committee (which included the instructor.)

While I'd hope that kind of shit has gotten better, I'd be shocked if it has.

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riverrats2000 t1_it1ntpj wrote

The other explanation is that they're pirating most of them like any good college student

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