The outright thievery that goes on the textbook industry is Astounding There are available "generic" textbooks for most of the lower level college courses ( https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ ) There is NO excuse for a college to require an insane book like that - Except a corrupt kickback scheme.
I'm a college prof. There is no kickback scheme in play.
So, WHY? Well, in many cases it's because of the online homework, or with the other instructional materials that come with adopting a particular commercial vendor.
We know practice makes perfect, and no one wants to grade 120 homework assignments and give meaningful feed back, so it's way easier to have the homework process automated.
I bet it also comes with a code that enables homework to be done. That code also prevents the book from being re-sold to anyone else who might be looking to save some money.
I worked in a used college textbook store for a while and this is not uncommon. It is sold this way as a "budget" option for students. Think how much more it would cost to have the binding!
Also this accomplishes something else much more devious: it makes it near impossible to sell back and to find used copies. The pages tear out and go missing. Sometimes questions are printed on the pages and the students have to write on the page and hand that in, making the "book" worthless to the next student.
And as a side issue, the outrageous pricing of texts actually promotes copyright infringement (illegal scanning & copying), because price-gouging never instills a warm, fuzzy, "I'm-happy-to-follow-the-rules" feeling.
The outright thievery that goes on the textbook industry is Astounding
ReplyDeleteThere are available "generic" textbooks for most of the lower level college courses
( https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ ) There is NO excuse for a college to require an insane book like that - Except a corrupt kickback scheme.
I'm a college prof.
DeleteThere is no kickback scheme in play.
So, WHY?
Well, in many cases it's because of the online homework, or with the other instructional materials that come with adopting a particular commercial vendor.
We know practice makes perfect, and no one wants to grade 120 homework assignments and give meaningful feed back, so it's way easier to have the homework process automated.
So, there are reasons why.
I bet it also comes with a code that enables homework to be done. That code also prevents the book from being re-sold to anyone else who might be looking to save some money.
ReplyDeleteI worked in a used college textbook store for a while and this is not uncommon. It is sold this way as a "budget" option for students. Think how much more it would cost to have the binding!
ReplyDeleteAlso this accomplishes something else much more devious: it makes it near impossible to sell back and to find used copies. The pages tear out and go missing. Sometimes questions are printed on the pages and the students have to write on the page and hand that in, making the "book" worthless to the next student.
And as a side issue, the outrageous pricing of texts actually promotes copyright infringement (illegal scanning & copying), because price-gouging never instills a warm, fuzzy, "I'm-happy-to-follow-the-rules" feeling.
ReplyDeleteLurker111