Are college textbooks still a massive scam?

Now it’s the homework keys they get you with. Gotta pay to do your homework online.

Yes. At ULL I had to buy a textbook that the professor wrote himself. Said everyone had to buy it and tear off attendance sheets in the back to turn in every day.

My wife and I had the same class, and he said I had to buy two textbooks and we couldn’t share.

I didn’t because that’s stupid

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Gotta pay to do your homework online.

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Wat

Yeah, you need codes to access the webpage to access homework and tests online.

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Gotta pay to do your homework online.

Wat

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it's been a scam for a while

Homework is online

to get the code for the online portal, one needs to buy a new $700 textbook

trade in the textbook for cover at the bar

Oh yeah, I do kind of remember that you could buy a math book for super cheap but the activation code was like $100. What a crock of shite.

I imagine college kids just pirate the books now. Most of the popular ones are online somewhere.

I have a friend who has a PhD in math from Stanford who is a tenured professor at Georgia Tech. When he was doing his post grad work he, along with 10 other math majors from around the world, co-authored a Calculus text book. One of the most used collegiate math textbooks ever published, since the mid 1980s. He has one of every "edition" and he has shown me numerous times that the ONLY difference between the first and the last edition is the numbering of odd and even questions in the book....and the answer key in the back of the book. The 10 co-authors do not even do that...they merely have a group of grad students re-arrange them. That book is selling new on Amazon in the latest edition for $137 a copy LOL. I don't know how much money that book has made but I know that dude owns a very nice home in in the Highlands and has a VERY nice house on the intercoastal in Melbourne, Florida. He has made some serious bank with that book.

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Been a few years since I had to buy any but I remember the increasing absurdity. You'd think if states gave a shite about the students' financial well-being they'd at least put some structure around keeping those costs down at public universities where they have some sway over policy since it doesn't affect their bottom line.

Unless of course all the relevant people are being bribed by the publishers.

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I had a physics prof who published the physics textbook he taught from who would copy pages out of it for his students to use. I asked him once why he did it and he said the question was why didn't more professors do it. The answer is obvious, they love money like most people LOL. The physics prof was a great teacher and he was convinced that most teachers would do the same thing...

At UNO, we had some professors with opposite reactions.

One professor bitched that they made him put out a new edition every 4 years. The first year of the new edition, he would include a cross reference of what changed between the previous edition and the current edition. If there was any new information, he would provide that as well. Got a lot of heat, but said he was tenured so who cares.

Had another that tried to have multiple copies available in the library and would tell us what pages to print each week. Library put a stop to that.