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justalittlesus t1_iszkm73 wrote

Reply to comment by ExperienceKCC in TIL the price of textbooks increases by an average of 12% with each new edition by ExperienceKCC

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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