Kasz216 said:
kain_kusanagi said:
Kasz216 said:
kain_kusanagi said:
A better question is why do college students need buy new text books every year? What so drastically changes the fundamentals of a field of study that last year's text book must be completely replaced? No simply flyer with updates, no corrections from the professor, nope, most of the time they just reword a few paragraphs, move the chapters around a bit and print a new edition.
It's a total scam. And don't think it's going to change when things go digital. The only change will be no used book sales. You'll have just as many yearly editions, but you won't be able to turn your book in at the end of your class for a partial refund.
Oh and reading on any iOS device is terrible and just as much an eyestrain as reading on any LCD display. The Kindle has a great paper like screen, but it's far too small for a text book. If I was still in college I'd stick with regular paper books, my Android, and my gaming PC. |
They have to buy new textbooks every year because they have differnet classes.
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.
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2) 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.
1) 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.
4) 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.
3)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.
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Hm, this post seems out of order, so I'll reply to it out of order.
1) Untrue actually. Bookstores have about a semester and a half to return any unsold books to the publisher for a full refund.
I know because I ran shipping and receiveing for a college bookstore who's bookbuyer was paralyzed with fear about missing any return dates even of books we were planning to reuse the next semester because they might change their mind.
2) Actually they don't so much "make deals" with colleges so much as force colleges to switch to a new edition. Like I said, for colleges the price of new books from publishers INCREASES every year. For example, our store relied on a strict "25%" margin on books. Whatever the books cost us we raised the price 25% to cover all our overhead and such. So Calculus VOL 12 cost 100, so we sold it for $125. The next year it was 150, so we sell it for $190. The next year it's $250 and a new edition comes out for $100.
Now the choice is either, keep going on and raise the new price to $312 and hope we can find enough used books. (Which is a lot harder then you'd think hence why the new books cost more each year) or Just buy the new edition so everyone can pay $125 rather then have people stuck with the new books having to pay a huge sum of money.
A lot of students outright REFUSE to use used books too. Mostly because they're on government book programs or scholarship programs that pay for their books no matter the cost.
Also, you'd be surprised how much history changes over the years...
3) As for Math. Actually often the teaching methods change... while Math hasn't changed, math is a hard thing for a lot of people to get, so they're always looking for new ways to make teaching it easier, additionally classes like the social and hard sceinces obviously need pretty frequent updates as research can often change what is being made. Really it all depends what your studying.
4) Because the US is essentially subsidizing the cost of other countries whose textbooks are cheaper. Well that and history books are generally written by one person and ecompasing a LOT more then your basic coffee table book and have WAY more refrences.
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