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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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