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What about the relation to the cost of the book – very similar to event probability.
If that were true there would be nothing to complain about.. since the maximum price would be 1 …
I worked at a community college bookstore for 3 years, and I can tell you, this is about as accurate as it gets.
And as far as the book prices go… I saw some books jump in price by as much as $30 just in those 3 years (Algebra and Psychology books that went from $98 to $130, for example). It’s ridiculous.
And naturally, when you work in the bookstore, everyone blames the store for everything that makes buying books so torturous.
Please be nicer to your college bookstore employees… they have no control over book prices/stocking of used books!!!!!
I don’t think I’ve ever actually encountered a newer edition where the only thing changed is the picture on the cover…
My situation is almost that ridiculous. I had to buy a “custom edition” of my Political Science text. I asked her what was the difference between that edition and the original one (which cost way less), and she replies, “I strongly recommend you buy the custom edition.” So I did, thinking that I actually needed this custom one that cost way more. Turns out, the only difference was the addition of the Georgia Constitution added to the end and the pictures were different. The rest of the text was exactly the same. And I had to pay twice as much for it. Seriously it’s like they can’t find enough ways to shiest us out of money.
That and since it’s a custom edition for Georgia Perimeter College, it’s completely useless to try to resell to anyone else besides a GPC student… That is, unless they change it again next semester, making it useless to everyone. Which they likely will.
And there’s the real lesson: you’re in college. Question everything. Even the questions you’re asking. Taking a non-answer like that and acting on it without pressing the issue is exactly the sort of crap you’re supposed to be learning to avoid.
win!
THANK YOU!!!!
Hmm… I guess that’s probably true in the bigger picture, and it’s a good lesson to learn. I really think she was just trying to promote a book that cost way more, as evidenced by not only her reply to me, but also her repeated emails to the rest of the students saying that the book was REQUIRED (her all-caps emphasis). I think she’s just completely phoning it in and probably didn’t even really read my question or give it enough thought or effort to compose a decent/helpful reply. But yeah, like you said, it’s a good lesson for the future. I should not only question things that seem wrong or half-answered, but also not assume that the teachers even give a damn, especially in a community college.
Don’t even get me started on Georgia State Univ… so many things wrong on so many levels that nobody wanted to address beyond the price of books, even when I asked the big questions. I found the only thing that worked was when I threw fits or just stayed in offices and annoyed people to the point that they couldn’t do their job.
Seriously, nobody should ever go to a public college/uni in Georgia. Ask if you want more information on why it took me 6 years to get a 4 year degree and gave me gray hairs at the ripe old age of 25!
Oh no! Don’t say that, my guy and I came all the way from the other side of the country so he could go to GSU & get his PhD!
GET OUT ASAP! I’m not joking… My education was NOT worth it there! Seriously, and if you came here from a western state, why weren’t there programs out there that you could have completed? Seems like most western states have great schools and great scholarships to boot!
We don’t really like it here. No offense to Georgians, but it’s just very different here. I even adapted the term “peachy” (as in Georgia peach), to mean everything here in GA that to me seems backwards and makes no sense, rather than the normal positive definition. It’s my own little passive-aggressive F-You.
GSU was where he got accepted and the program was interesting. It seems like there is a lot of uproar here. Apparently they’re going to vote on whether or not to have the community colleges get absorbed by the tech schools, effectively eliminating the community colleges here and removing them from the university system. That would seriously affect me because it would cut most of the online courses and there’s no guarantee that any classes I take would even transfer anywhere, especially outside the state.
Are other states doing this? Or is it just Georgia being “peachy”?
It’s our brilliant Republican governor probably, he’s always cut the amount of funding to colleges and higher education in this state as long as he’s been in office, it seems. Email me at jessicainstrasbourg [at] gmail [dot] com if you really want to hear some horror stories about GSU and how even the Board of Regents brushed off my repeated requests for change in the university after the dean of both my college and the entire university itself didn’t feel responsible for the shabby treatment of it’s students.
Being out of the uni system, I don’t really know much about the bill of which you speak, but I will look into it. Sounds creepy, and there are some pretty good community colleges out there (Georgia Perimeter is ok, they have some great study abroad programs actually).
No Georgia Tech in California
Huh?
You’re right, they always change the order of the questions in the exercises.
I just had to go buy new ones…$80.00 for a book that I haven’t even used yet.
How about:
-Chance book will be expensive: %99
-Chance you will use expensive book: %1
One of my chemistry text books changed editions between the first and second semester of the class. I looked, and the *only* thing that had changed aside from the cover was that the chapters had been rearranged. It was in all other ways word-for-word identical. College text books are the biggest scam going.
Yeah, just how much money you spend on them. My teacher got pissed when she saw that I had my brother’s old Geology 103 book, and told me she’s fail me if I didn’t get the ‘new’ required book. His book was from just the year before. I told her that if she wasn’t smart enough to figure out that we didn’t need to buy the same $190 book *thats the used price* for four siblings since nothing had changed since last year, then she didn’t belong in front of that class. I ended up passing that particular class 5 weeks ahead of everyone else, with my old book and my $190 in my pocket.
My point exactly. I was always under the impression that you should get graded based on the answers you give, not where the answers come from.
If you are asked for the size of Iowa and you reply 56,272 sqare miles, I do not believe your teacher would rely: wrong, those are the square miles from last year’s book.
Except that professors require the new book, and have the power to force you to go and buy it.
The department heads encourage them to do this.
Many professors -would- have failed Hell Hath No Fury. And the department heads would have stood behind them.
And I would have printed up the NEW book cover and superglued it on to my book, and asked the dean why the hell the adults twice my age are getting C’s and less in the ‘NEW, IMPROVED, DOLCE&GABBANA BOOK’ and I’m getting A’s in my broken-ass Converse book, to make a comparison, and what geologically and historically world-altering phenomenon has changed the entire course of Geology and life as we know it as of nine months ago.
And you are paying how much in tuition to be subjected to this crap? God forbid that anybody who takes this kind of crap ever gets into a job with real responsibility. On second thougts, thinking about the state of the economy, they probably already have.
I bit my tongue on that one, thanks for having the balls to say what tact kept me from saying.
Sheesh.
I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t continue fighting it if I it happened to me.
I’m just saying that most people won’t, and that they shouldn’t have to fight over something so trivial.
wouldn’t**
The probability of a new textbook being released AND some other event occurring cannot be greater than the probability of just the new textbook being released by itself. Therefore the last 3 bars cannot be any larger then the second. Obviously, you didn’t buy the latest edition for your probs and stats class.
Except the second bar says “every semester” and the last three are not “every semester” and some other event. In fact, bars 3 and 4 do not mention a newer edition at all. So, you fail.
Well, I guess bar 3 does says new edition. I’m still right though.
I’m guessing you’re the author, because this graph has poop written all over it.
And yes, you’re right. That’s all that matters.
Actually, I’m the author of this graph. I respect your opinion re: the ‘poop’ written all over it, but you have to understand this graph is just for fun like probably every other graph here. You don’t need to overanalyze everything in it. You are welcome to submit your own similar graph with ‘corrected’ bars and conditions if you’d like, but you don’t have to insult me and other members on here in the process.
3, 4, and 5 say “new edition,” meaning the latest one to be released, not necessarily this semester.
Obviously, you took the non-calculus-based prob and stats classes, not the fancy math-major ones. Either that, or you didn’t do so well at Reading Between The Lines 101. ;P
could just as easily have been a venn diagram. so true.
You forgot something about how the Professor wrote the damn book in the first place, and is just subsidizing his salary with some royalties.
Not all are guilty of this, I wouldn’t even go so far as to say “most are”… however, those that do are most often shameless, greedy bastards who care more about money than education, and are quite good at covering their tracks.
Thankfully, the only time I’ve had a prof assign their own book, it wasn’t published yet, so he gave us photocopied manuscripts he’d had bound at Kinko’s, and we just repaid him the $10 or so dollars it had cost him. (I forget the amount.)
The other cool thing was that he was still editing it, so he gave us back our $10 at the end of the semester if we returned the manuscripts with comments and corrections to any errors we’d found.
Bwahahaha and you should have been able to grade him and then add points onto your own grade for every word/etc he missed.
Very true….I have seen that many times, including a “Workbook” that nothing more than a blurry collated copy of a copy of a copy for $50. Although, if they are actively writing a book, it’s the easiest “D” you can get.
i agree here. what’s funnier is that in my case he was an ‘environmental studies’ prof and didn’t encourage buying used. also he cared more about editing his next book than actually teaching the class.
*shrugs* One of my profs wrote the textbook, and he even said, “You don’t have to buy it if you don’t want to/can’t afford it. My lectures are basically the important stuff from the book–everything else is just for you to read at your leisure if you want more information.” I prefer to highlight over writing notes because I’m a slow writer with atrocious handwriting, so I bought the book. But a lot of people did well in that class without it.
I do agree that there are some shameless, greedy bastards out there. I’ve gotten lucky so far, I suppose.
I thought the obvious was missing, too. Seemed like half my textbooks were written by the professors, and updated every year. It’s like a built-in side income for them. And of course, it makes the resale market pointless. Some of them didn’t change the answer order or even the cover. You couldn’t find a difference other than the publishing date.
Things I Learned in College 101.
My prof is quite fortunately an aversion of the truly grand-sized ones – upon reading the textbook assigned, I found references to another textbook on the exact same subject. That one was written by my prof. The one she assigned us was not.
Isn’t this what libraries are for?
I bought a stack of engineering books at uni they were always way overpriced, and hardly got used, really pretty much everything you needed to know was given in the lectures… And all the books were available in the uni library.
Holy crap, your uni library actually had the books? The only textbooks in my uni library were 50 years old, or books for teaching kindergartners their ABC’s.
It varies from one institution to another, and with some places *coughuabcough* you’re not gonna find your book in the library. However, some students do sell their books for less than the bookstore’s used price, but more than they’d get from buyback. During undergrad, the first place I always checked for books was the bulletin board, followed by the independent text stores on campus that didn’t price gouge quite so much.
It can matter what book you have if the professor assigns homework directly from the problems in a particular textbook. If every homework comes directly from an expensive textbook, you pretty much have to buy that textbook, even though the older editions are nearly the same.
Touche
There were two circumstances where that happened, just as a blow to me, because even the other students complained that the questions weren’t in THIER books either. Google and fully studying your book instead of the paragraph before and after the ‘key word’ sure helps.
True, but most of us do have to pay for our own textbooks. Now, imagine you’re taking calculus. A used textbook might go for around $70, whereas that new edition textbook your teacher wants you to buy is easily twice that price.
And as an added bonus, the order of the questions in the new edition is different, so when you’re assigned homework problems, or discussing problems with your classmates/professor, you are at a serious disadvantage if you cheaped out and got the old textbook.
Then, when you take Cal II, one of three things happens:
A: The text has undergone yet another revision, and you have to trade in your old book for a new one (and you only get about $20, tops, for selling your old textbook).
B: Your new prof prefers a different publisher’s book. So again, you have to sell your old book to get that new one.
C: Whoops, you sold your old book by mistake. Now you have to waste a ton of money buying it back again.
It’s even more frustrating in the wonderful world of education classes. Each teacher has different ideas of which texts are best suited to each individual class, so you could end up re-using a book for several different classes, or having a different Intro To Special Ed book than your best friend who’s taking the same course under a different teacher. Plus, some teachers never use the book at all, so you’ve basically bought a $100 paperweight/emergency resource.
And don’t even get me started on physics. Same thing, only the books are $250 new.
You’re telling me. When I went in for welding, for boilermaker’s union, I had an old, crusty book. The basic info was the same, but I didn’t know just how much had been improved since 1982 *hangs head in shame* and just about killed myself and my welding box using old techniques that are now obsolete due to, well, death and such.
So. True.
I didn’t buy a single book for either semester of college so far and I didn’t need them~
Well technically I needed the English one cuz it had stories I was supposed to read, but I made up convoluted answers to the questions and my dumbass teachers fell for them~
not mentioned, teacher will order wrong book, require you to buy new book, and read it verbatim as if you where two.
why did I buy the book now?
SO effing true. I’ve wasted hundreds of dollars on books I never even cracked open because of these very reasons. Then my school is so cheap that when I try to sell them back, Im lucky to get 20 bucks for a 120 dollar book.
What I hate, which is only mildly related to this, is when the bookstore shrink-wraps used books together because they are part of a set. In order to return them to get your money back completely, you have to not open the shrink-wrap. So, you assume that the books are in good enough quality to use and open them. What you find out is that the books are covered in highlighting, writing, and otherwise mysterious stains and marks and thus cannot return them for the full price, so you’re stuck with a set of $100 books that are useless and you’d only get $50 back.
I majored in Biology and Chemistry. All my professors tested on the class notes they gave, not on the textbooks. In four years I bought two books for science, four for math/physics (otherwise the answers were too hard to find in the back), and about eight for lit classes because I kept them to read again later. None were new.
Logic fail.
IF nothing changes except picture on cover THEN older books can be used in class.
And profs don’t make that much in royalties. If they require a book because they wrote it, it’s an ego thing.
excellent graphic.
more like, nothing has changed in the new editions except the problems at the end of the chapter, so i have to buy the new one anyways
Silly Wabbits -
Textbooks and the assorted cost game have nothing to do with your professors and everything to do with the reason you GO to college- it’s to prepare you for real life.
Real Life ain’t fair, don’t care, and if you throw a temper tantrum , Life starts tossing grenades.
We are trained early on in life to be in debt, so yeah, I guess if you have to take out loans to get your books, you’re right in the learning curve where you should be! Next up, new cars, credit card debt, and a home mortgage, yay!
The pricing of textbooks has always seemed to be out of line
I know what you mean. After four semesters of buying books, my record for a single book is $165. This semester, I had over $500 in books.
me too. i just spent $530 last week.
talk about capitalism. $1 to make the book, $2 to the author, and the rest of the $117 to the bookstore. Oh yeah, and at the end of the semester, the bookstore will only buy it back from me for $15. Yeah, thanks.
Buying textbooks online is a great way to find cheap textbook prices but be careful of the shipping method. Media Mail is cheap but can take up to 4 weeks if the the textbook is coming cross country! I like the price comparison tool at Cheap-Textbooks.com
Here are some PRIME EXAMPLES of why textbook prices are so damn high:
Textbook Scams and Schemes
And here is some stats/facts about the historical price increases… and a few decent tips for staving off the high prices to a small degree:
Textbook Prices: a Historical Look
This should probably be a pie chart.
you forgot, they change the order of important sections around so you can’t follow your professors new syllabus with an old book even if they let you get the old version
There’s A man named John Ray in Authority here in Portland Oregon and He is A f@@king Pedophile and A Serial Killer!
Textbook prices are increasing at an astronomical rate. Our local bookstores are taking advantage of the fact that students like to procrastinate. That’s why if you have time it is better to go online and buy your books at places like http://www.mycollegetextbooks.com and http://www.half.com
it’s all about publicity ie money to book publichers. During my 2 first semesters in college I boought the new editions “thinking” that the teachers were going to ask me “go to page 5, do this exercise” and would be a mess to have a differente book. I am about to graduate and NO ONE SINGLE TEACHER asked me that, nor they used the book, just ME, if I wanted to review something. So I learned the lesson and bought the next older edition, never had a problem, and save a lot of $$$.
The end.