NationStates Jolt Archive

Hark!

Getting out of the early middle English mode for a while, I shall get to the real point of this thread.

today, I went and got my Calculus textbook. Interestingly, it did not have a pricetag on it. When the cashier (rather hot, BTW) scanned it, my mouth hit the floor. $214.99. Two hundred dollars for one (1) textbook!

WTF? It's a fucking book! And it isn't made of gold or a Gutenberg bible! It's a fucking math book! Where do the publishers get the balls to charge these prices?

Gah, this is why college kids are always so poor and drunk. They have to take out a mortgage to pay for textbooks and use alcohol to drown their money woes. Hell, getting drunk sounds pretty good right now....

/rant

My school had one of the best systems for students. Textbook rental. You paid about $80 at the beginning of the semester and returned them at the end. You could purchase them at the end for full price.

It didn't cover "every" book, but the majority.

I remember paying 35 dollars for a calculus textbook in 1979.

And paying over 250 dollars for the Riverside Shakespeare in hardcover.

The most expensive ones are always the ones they replace next semester so you can't sell them back. They otrder a brand new fucking book so you can't buy it used and have to put down $200 on it then they change books the next year and you can't sell it back. Hurray for a huge paper weight

A friend of mine needed a computer program for one of her courses.......$800, she decided to do the trial version...and hope that she didn't need it after 30 days. :p

Ugh. I always hated buying books in college. The beginning of the quarter was always nice, except for the dreaded trip to the bookstore with the knowledge I was about to spend $600 dollars.

A friend of mine needed a computer program for one of her courses.......$800, she decided to do the trial version...and hope that she didn't need it after 30 days. :p

800 bucks for software? What was it?

A friend of mine needed a computer program for one of her courses.......$800, she decided to do the trial version...and hope that she didn't need it after 30 days. :p


that was the student price? holy hell!

you guys might have to pay ourtageous prices, but at least you get good textbooks. alas, the wonders of the 20th century elude the writer of my history textbook...

Yeah, it sucks. My university slogs me $40-$60 (Australian dollars) for photocopied readers. Textbooks are on top of that, but they're generally "optional", meaning don't expect to do well if you don't buy them and can't camp out in the reserve section of the library. If you want to do well, you're looking at a minimum of $500 a year - for an arts degree. Hell, my first-year French textbook was over $200 alone.

But I have it easy compared to most; my friends studying engineering have to pay in excess of $1000 a year for books.

Once upon a time there was a subsidy on textbooks...but no longer, I don't think. It used to be an 8% discount. But beats me why they don't just exempt textbooks from the 10% sales tax.

What I also love is how they change textbooks on a yearly basis, so that they're virtually worthless to resell, and it's almost impossible to find second hand copies in the edition you require.

Ugh.

800 bucks for software? What was it?
some kind of professional film editing thingy-jig now that she is out of college and works for someone else, she gets to use it, she says it's like $1500 for non-students to buy it, and her co. has licensing for it on 12 computers.......she said she wishes she had a co. that made that kind of $$

Yeah, it sucks. My university slogs me $40-$60 (Australian dollars) for photocopied readers.
Oh, don't even get me started on course readers. I took a course once where most of the required reading was in a two volume course reader. Each reader was around two inches thick, and cost upwards of $100. Then, halfway through the course, my prof decided to add more readings to the syllabus, and had a supplemental reader made, which only cost an additional $80. This on top of several rather expensive books. Yuck.

At the beginning of my 3rd year of University I found a "professors" photocopy card in a machine. It had 2,700 copies available on it. So I photocopied all my books ($650.00 worth) and returned them.

Oh, don't even get me started on course readers. I took a course once where most of the required reading was in a two volume course reader. Each reader was around two inches thick, and cost upwards of $100. Then, halfway through the course, my prof decided to add more readings to the syllabus, and had a supplemental reader made, which only cost an additional $80. This on top of several rather expensive books. Yuck.

Ughhh! I can't recall if a certain reading brick that's still sitting on my desk mocking me since two years ago cost me $80 or $60....hmm....i'm gonna stick with $60.

It's sitting there staring at me now, with all of it's two inch thickness and puke-yellow cover.

Staring.

Mocking.

Saying "this is a bottle of whiskey and slab of beer."

Bastard. :mad:

But if i had to pay $300 for photocopied readers, i'd just drop out of the subject. (unless it was a core subject for you...then you're stuffed.)

some kind of professional film editing thingy-jig now that she is out of college and works for someone else, she gets to use it, she says it's like $1500 for non-students to buy it, and her co. has licensing for it on 12 computers.......she said she wishes she had a co. that made that kind of $$
That's pretty gay. The student/trial version of Maya is free.

So many students with such little understanding of economics.

Look at any advanced (university level) textbook - particularly calculus or such like. How many copies are they going to sell? 1000 - across the country max. How expensive is it to produce? Very - non standard fonts, diagrams and a pig to proof - but has to be perfect.

Why do universities and colleges have libraries? - Use them.

At the beginning of my 3rd year of University I found a "professors" photocopy card in a machine. It had 2,700 copies available on it. So I photocopied all my books ($650.00 worth) and returned them.
Lucky.

At my school, there are signs up explicity forbidding the photocopying of texts and the machine is in plain view of everyone...

Ughhh! I can't recall if a certain reading brick that's still sitting on my desk mocking me since two years ago cost me $80 or $60....hmm....i'm gonna stick with $60.

It's sitting there staring at me now, with all of it's two inch thickness and puke-yellow cover.

Staring.

Mocking.

Saying "this is a bottle of whiskey and slab of beer."

Bastard. :mad:

But if i had to pay $300 for photocopied readers, i'd just drop out of the subject. (unless it was a core subject for you...then you're stuffed.)
Did you ever even look into it?


And man, all those prices that were posted about are insane! $200 for a maths book? WTF?

Lucky.

At my school, there are signs up explicity forbidding the photocopying of texts and the machine is in plain view of everyone...
Huh? Why would they do that? What else would you want to copy anyway? [/confused]

At the beginning of my 3rd year of University I found a "professors" photocopy card in a machine. It had 2,700 copies available on it. So I photocopied all my books ($650.00 worth) and returned them.

LOL.

Once, I was running late for an assignment, and I needed this damn book that I was advised to buy at the start of semester, but it was $80 or so, so I didn't bother. I took a trip down to the state library, and was happy to find it on the database...so I went and fetched it. I was intending to copy only a couple of pages, but I found an almost-full $10 copy card there...that amounted to slightly less than 100 pages.

I started copying away, and then one of the attendants asked me to make sure that I only copied one chapter, because anything above that is copyright infringement, blah blah.

"Erm. OK. So...what would you do if I decided to keep going, then?" "Uh..."

Needless to say, I kept going. :p

But if i had to pay $300 for photocopied readers, i'd just drop out of the subject. (unless it was a core subject for you...then you're stuffed.)
Sadly, I did have to take that particular course. I've never dropped a class because of the cost of books, but I must admit that the times I did drop something without replacing it, I used it as justification for spending a lot of money. You know, "hey I have $300 more dollars for the next ten weeks than I had planned on - I should go buy a new graphics card!" type thinking. :p

That's pretty gay. The student/trial version of Maya is free.
they had a trial version that you could use (with limited capabilities) for 30 days, and then the student version (less limited) that also had a time limit, and then the full version.

Anywho, not my problem.......I would be pissed if one of hubby's professors tried to make him buy something so expensive. Luckily he has been able to get free versions of software for all his classes.....so far....;)

Course (curse) packs are terrible. I had to buy one for an Integrated Social Science class last year, and the prof didn't use it at all!

Damn weak.

Did you ever even look into it?

Not really. I only read three sections out of twelve, one for my essay, two for my exam. Complete waste of money, but it's the same with pretty much all my subjects. ;)

Did you ever even look into it?


And man, all those prices that were posted about are insane! $200 for a maths book? WTF?

I can actually understand that price - it makes some kind of sense, but this (http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0415020123)- $1750 for a set of essays about David Hume. WTF! (What is more worrying still is that it is out of stock.)

My major seems to be one with very inexpensive textbooks (knock on wood) for some reason I cannot fully understand. The prices average at about $30-$40. Which certainly beats your $250. I think it's terrible when a book costs $75, let alone that much.

I can actually understand that price - it makes some kind of sense, but this (http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0415020123)- $1750 for a set of essays about David Hume. WTF! (What is more worrying still is that it is out of stock.)

WTF is right. That's over $1.50 per page!

So many students with such little understanding of economics.

Look at any advanced (university level) textbook - particularly calculus or such like. How many copies are they going to sell? 1000 - across the country max. How expensive is it to produce? Very - non standard fonts, diagrams and a pig to proof - but has to be perfect.

Why do universities and colleges have libraries? - Use them.
Very few students at my school used the library instead of buying their own books. This was because if a book was being used for a course, it was put on reserve, which meant you couldn't take the book out of the library, and could only check it out for 30 minutes at a time. For me, that wasn't worth it. As much as I might bitch about the price of the books, I'm glad I have my own copies of them.

As for textbooks being expensive to produce, I readily admit I don't know how much it costs. Still, I imagine the markup is fairly substantial. My freshman year, one of the physics courses I took required a textbook that cost $120 or so. Nine months after I bought the book (in California), I found the same book in a bookstore in Zambia for about $30. Needless to say, I was pretty pissed off.

Yes, but Zambia is rather a long way to go to buy textbooks for a course in the US. What I find really frightening is that college was so long ago that I can't remember how much my books cost.

But more importantly, where do you get "a slab of beer"? I want one!

The most I ever paid for a book during my degree was £50 and in the end I only bought 4 books. One was a general physics text book, good for quick reference, same for maths. The other 2 books were on gerneral relativity because the course was so damn hard.

For each lecture series we would be recommended about 3-4 books and we would have 8 lecture series during the year, but I didn't buy any books unless I was going to be using them alot.

What kind of calculus are you doing that justfies a book at that price?

Very few students at my school used the library instead of buying their own books. This was because if a book was being used for a course, it was put on reserve, which meant you couldn't take the book out of the library, and could only check it out for 30 minutes at a time. For me, that wasn't worth it. As much as I might bitch about the price of the books, I'm glad I have my own copies of them.

Yeah. If you want to do well, you have to buy.

As for textbooks being expensive to produce, I readily admit I don't know how much it costs. Still, I imagine the markup is fairly substantial. My freshman year, one of the physics courses I took required a textbook that cost $120 or so. Nine months after I bought the book (in California), I found the same book in a bookstore in Zambia for about $30. Needless to say, I was pretty pissed off.

Doesn't explain why they change the textbooks every year, either...methinks my university uses it as a fundraiser. I can understand it to some degree in subjects where the material needs to be up to date - current affairs oriented subjects in particular, or perhaps something like programming - but history textbooks, science textbooks, etc? Give me a break.

Very few students at my school used the library instead of buying their own books. This was because if a book was being used for a course, it was put on reserve, which meant you couldn't take the book out of the library, and could only check it out for 30 minutes at a time. For me, that wasn't worth it. As much as I might bitch about the price of the books, I'm glad I have my own copies of them.
The library only had one copy of required texts? Perhaps I was just lucky. What it meant was I could choose which texts to buy - those that I would want in the future.


As for textbooks being expensive to produce, I readily admit I don't know how much it costs. Still, I imagine the markup is fairly substantial. My freshman year, one of the physics courses I took required a textbook that cost $120 or so. Nine months after I bought the book (in California), I found the same book in a bookstore in Zambia for about $30. Needless to say, I was pretty pissed off.
Of course, $30 in Zambia has the buying power of $150 in California - so it was actually more expensive there.

But more importantly, where do you get "a slab of beer"? I want one!

Oh, a slab is Aussie slang for a case of beer. I slip up occasionally. >.>

My major seems to be one with very inexpensive textbooks (knock on wood) for some reason I cannot fully understand. The prices average at about $30-$40. That's actually about the average price I remember from my year in the US. Of course, that was quite a few years ago <.<. But we also could buy most of them used anyway.

Not really. I only read three sections out of twelve, one for my essay, two for my exam. Complete waste of money, but it's the same with pretty much all my subjects. ;) Yeah, same here. I always start out with the good intentions and then... But at least they're way cheaper here. Copyright issues actually aren't an issue here in cases like that, for whatever reason.


I started copying away, and then one of the attendants asked me to make sure that I only copied one chapter, because anything above that is copyright infringement, blah blah.

"Erm. OK. So...what would you do if I decided to keep going, then?" "Uh..."

Needless to say, I kept going.
Aha, copyrights again. I guess that also answers my question to Kryozerkya above why they're not allowed to copy texts. Crazy. We all copy texts. I mean, maybe this is a silly question, but what do you do if you need a book for research but it can't be taken out of the library? Here (and that includes the National Library) you just go and copy it in their in-house copy shop. I'm guessing the copyright only becomes an issue if you do that for anything but private use. Dunno.

but I must admit that the times I did drop something without replacing it, I used it as justification for spending a lot of money. You know, "hey I have $300 more dollars for the next ten weeks than I had planned on - I should go buy a new graphics card!" type thinking. Ah, yes, my favourite kind of logic. Makes for the bestest shopping trips. :p

The library only had one copy of required texts? Perhaps I was just lucky. What it meant was I could choose which texts to buy - those that I would want in the future.
No, there were usually several copies of each text on reserve. My problem was that the required reading would usually take an hour or two, and having to go back every 30 minutes to renew the book was annoying because I'd lose my train of thought. I also like to make notes in the margins, which obviously is a no-no in a library book.

Of course, $30 in Zambia has the buying power of $150 in California - so it was actually more expensive there.
Good point; I hadn't thought of that. As a side note - is $30 worth of kwacha really equivalent to $150 in terms of purchasing power?