good example of the US college textbook scam...

[CosmicCowboy]

An employee of mines daughter goes to Palo Alto and needed a zoology textbook for a class this year...the book was $250 in the university book store. I just bought the same book for him on Amazon...same edition etc.for $79. on Prime. You couldn't tell it looking at the picture on Amazon but it came with a bright yellow label on the front cover "For English Speaking students outside the US only". What a freaking scam. And people wonder why US college is so expensive...

[I. Hustle]

Who goes to the college bookstores? I always got mine online. Some of them I could get on my Kindle and it would disappear once the class was over. No fuss

[clambake]

the point he's making is about the cost of these books that are out of reach for US kids.

[baseline bum]

An employee of mines daughter goes to Palo Alto and needed a zoology textbook for a class this year...the book was $250 in the university book store. I just bought the same book for him on Amazon...same edition etc.for $79. on Prime. You couldn't tell it looking at the picture on Amazon but it came with a bright yellow label on the front cover "For English Speaking students outside the US only". What a freaking scam. And people wonder why US college is so expensive...

The worst I have seen was this textbook called Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs that McGraw Hill had the volume license for while MIT Press had the regular license. So if you bought the textbook on Amazon from MIT Press it was like $60 while if you went to school bookstore they could only order the McGraw Hill one that cost $110. Amazing that the price per unit almost doubles with a volume order. But the two versions are exactly the same except the cover is purple on the McGraw-Hill and blue on the MIT Press version. What's hilarious is the authors actually publish the book for free online, no hoops to jump through or shit to sign up for, you can just go read the book right now.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

I saw another similar thing with Purcell's Electricity and Magnetism (brilliant E&M book, absolute top notch). I bought the Cambridge Press hardcover for like $60 while the McGraw-Hill hardcover was $110. The Cambridge Press UK edition is beautiful, same quality as $150 US textbooks.

Nowadays you can buy Indian edition paperbacks off ebay for $20-$25 of most popular science/math/engineering books published by the exact same companies. They fought to try to make importing these books illegal but the Supreme Court told them to fuck off. I have bought a couple of Indian edition physics books off ebay (Classical Mechanics by Goldstein and Vibrations and Waves by AP French) and they're awesome. They're not the same paper quality as in the $150 textbooks but they're much better quality than the Dover paperbacks of great math/science/etc books published once they become public domain. The Indian sellers make a grip on it too since those books are like $9 if you buy them on the Indian ebay site, though I imagine they won't ship to the US if you buy from them instead of the US ebay site.

[baseline bum]

Considering how bad students are raped by colleges right now they should just pirate all their books though. Here's a good place to do so:

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/

Back in my day we didn't have this great piracy scene though, I just had to give my Chinese friend and my Persian friend a few bucks to pick up the books I needed when they went home for the Christmas break or the summer. :lol

[I. Hustle]

the point he's making is about the cost of these books that are out of reach for US kids.

I understand the point he's trying to make CM. My point was that you can find them cheaper here in the US if you just look around. You don't have to buy the $300 book when you can get it for $60

[I. Hustle]

The worst I have seen was this textbook called Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs that McGraw Hill had the volume license for while MIT Press had the regular license. So if you bought the textbook on Amazon from MIT Press it was like $60 while if you went to school bookstore they could only order the McGraw Hill one that cost $110. Amazing that the price per unit almost doubles with a volume order. But the two versions are exactly the same except the cover is purple on the McGraw-Hill and blue on the MIT Press version. What's hilarious is the authors actually publish the book for free online, no hoops to jump through or shit to sign up for, you can just go read the book right now.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

I saw another similar thing with Purcell's Electricity and Magnetism (brilliant E&M book, absolute top notch). I bought the Cambridge Press hardcover for like $60 while the McGraw-Hill hardcover was $110. The Cambridge Press UK edition is beautiful, same quality as $150 US textbooks.

Nowadays you can buy Indian edition paperbacks off ebay for $20-$25 of most popular science/math/engineering books published by the exact same companies. They fought to try to make importing these books illegal but the Supreme Court told them to fuck off. I have bought a couple of Indian edition physics books off ebay (Classical Mechanics by Goldstein and Vibrations and Waves by AP French) and they're awesome. They're not the same paper quality as in the $150 textbooks but they're much better quality than the Dover paperbacks of great math/science/etc books published once they become public domain. The Indian sellers make a grip on it too since those books are like $9 if you buy them on the Indian ebay site, though I imagine they won't ship to the US if you buy from them instead of the US ebay site.

Did they smell like curry?

[baseline bum]

Here is another one that pisses me off: Complex Analysis by Lars Ahlfors. No new edition in 37 years, the author has been dead 20 years, and this isn't some esoteric book that no one uses and thus might be hard to find, it's the standard (and best written) graduate level book on the subject at the better schools. And it's almost fucking $250. That is fucking perverse.

https://www.amazon.com/Complex-Analysis-Lars-Ahlfors/dp/0070006571/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1472581302&sr=1-1

[baseline bum]

What really sucks is these publishers will put in computer quizzes and shit that require you to buy new copies of the book so you can access them. So if your professor is lazy or crooked he'll assign problems from those quizzes instead of doing his own.

[clambake]

I understand the point he's trying to make CM. My point was that you can find them cheaper here in the US if you just look around. You don't have to buy the $300 book when you can get it for $60

unless you are taking prof. fleabers class in the freshman.

[Trill Clinton]

yup sucks. most of my classes dont require books. the new hustle is paying for online access to the class which has quizzes and homeworks:td

[I. Hustle]

yup sucks. most of my classes dont require books. the new hustle is paying for online access to the class which has quizzes and homeworks:td

EXACTLY! They found a workaround for the books.

The books that I have bought most recently (about a year) weren't even needed. Money spent for no reason.

[baseline bum]

Damn here's what a prof who posts here said about shitty McGraw-Hill in a thread I posted 7 years ago about this bullshit :lol


As a former student, I concur. As a current professor, McGraw-Hill has paid me hundreds to simply test out their on-line technology, bribed me with free food and gift cards to use their books, and even given me multiple free copies of the text in question that I could resell unopened for nice pocket change. I now understand... That said, I've never used a McGraw-Hill text, and until they bring back $50 textbooks, I'll simply let them pay me to consider their texts.

[Chinook]

I love the textbook market. When I was in school, folks used to "throw away" (literally meaning that they'd leave them outside their rooms with other trash they couldn't be bothered to toss out) their textbooks at the end of the year, because Ivies gonna Ivy. My roommates and I would walk through and pick up the books to resell on Amazon. All you had to do is list the book for like 10 cents cheaper than the lowest listing, and the book was gone within a day or two. Or you could just send it directly to Amazon for store credit (as good as real money on a site like that).

I was always in the green with books. I'd easily clear about two grand a summer, and I'd pick up about half the books I needed anyway (with the store credit taking care about whatever I had left). It was one of my great college memories.

[Blake]

Colleges are screwing students in all different types of ways.

[JMarkJohns]

I haven't required a textbook in my classes for years.

It removes ideas and creativity from teaching.

I have "Suggested" texts, that I copy up to the maximum allowable content from under academic fair use, I find published articles, and I allow students to suiplement with their own findings, which can be scanned into PDF from free library books or cheaply printed Internet articles.

I am constantly threatened by my superiors to stop devaluing textbooks.

Yet I'm the one with the 95% retention rate.

Textbooks are for the lazy or the limited or those on kickbacks.

[FkLA]

The most disgusting shit I saw was when the 'new' editions were identical to the older ones except for the problems at the end of chapters. The problems weren't all that different either, usually just in a different order or a number switched here or there.

I eventually caught on to it and started just buying older editions for a fraction of the price then going to the library and taking pictures/scanning the end of chapter problems.

[JMarkJohns]

I have editions of text books where the only significant change was an editor, or added co-author, and chapter scramble.

In reading them, there's almost nothing of substance to justify the new edition other than money grab.

If I cared, I'd write a text and require it, but I don't believe in textbooks, so, I'd rather have the freedom. Besides, I adapt every semester. Don't need a worded anchor to station me in one way or one style or one focus.

[spurraider21]

the most disgusting shit is when a professor assigns a book he authored

[JMarkJohns]

the most disgusting shit is when a professor assigns a book he authored

Unless it saves the students money.

I had several do this and in most instances the cost was half for industry standard textbook from the bigger companies.

[baseline bum]

Unless it saves the students money.

I had several do this and in most instances the cost was half for industry standard textbook from the bigger companies.

I had that happen in one of my math classes. The professor wrote an awesome textbook that was like $7.95.

[baseline bum]

The most disgusting shit I saw was when the 'new' editions were identical to the older ones except for the problems at the end of chapters. The problems weren't all that different either, usually just in a different order or a number switched here or there.

I eventually caught on to it and started just buying older editions for a fraction of the price then going to the library and taking pictures/scanning the end of chapter problems.

Yeah I saw a freshman physics book where the only difference between the second and fourth editions was scrambling the order of exercises and changing the initial angle of the particle or the voltage being applied or whatever so you couldn't use the old edition for your homework problems. The same fucking problems just with different numerical values for the measurements. I can't remember the name of the book right off hand now though.

[TDMVPDPOY]

either go library and barrow it

or buy a used book...