Kasz216 said:
Different Textbook editions actually don't come out every year and most schools will stick with an older edition for a year or two after the new one comes out because of used textbook sales which are pretty important. It's why unlike most things the price of textbooks goes up every year for a college bookstore. The first year of a new edition is the cheapest the college bookstore will ever get it for... after that they'll jack up the price 25-50 bucks at a time. I used to run shipping and receiving at a college bookstore and onetime we had a book go up so high in price it was actually costing us more then we were selling it for and it was after our "Price freeze" happened. |
I may have exaggerated and I did misspeak when I questioned buying new books every year. I didn't mean to suggest people take the same classes over and over again. Although some sequences of classes will use the same text, by splitting the book between levels. What I meant was why do students have to buy 2012 books when a subject like math could use the same book for decades? Is a math book from 1980 wrong? Has history been rewritten since the printing of the 1990 edition of U.S. History? The textbook industry is s total scam. They make deals with schools so they can keep printing books even when nobody needs a new book. On top of that the books are overpriced just like the classes. A college degree shouldn't put someone in debt for the rest of their life. The cost of textbooks may not be the biggest part of the cost of an education, but it shouldn't be as high as it is.
Don't try to tell me that books cost so much because that's how much they cost. Unlike other publications textbook companies know how many sales they'll have before they print due to school contracts. There is absolutely no reason why a textbook should cost more than a brand new copy of Harry Potter.
Why is it that a coffee table book on the history of the U.S., with color pictures, costs a fraction of a college text book for U.S. History 101? I'll tell you why and it's not because the content is so much more reliable. It's because college students have accepted the universal screw job they've been given and textbook companies and colleges just keep taking advantage of them. If more people would choose cheaper school and community colleges instead of believing the fallacy that big schools mean better educations/higher salaries, than there would be real competition. It would drive down costs and up the quality all around.
When I was in college I almost never bought new books from the school bookstore. After my freshman year I figured out how big of a scam it was when I tried to sell them back to the bookstore. From then on I'd buy used books online for a fraction of the cost. Many times I would buy old "outdated" editions that literaly cost pennies. Guess what? Those "outdated" books where nearly identicle to the new books my classmates had. I never ran into any issues using the older books. One of my professors actualy recommended an old edition to a class because he knew they were the same.
Textbooks are a scam, plain and simple.
