High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students • Hacker News Board

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#101

Post by electriclove » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:31 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #21

raincom wrote: post #18

Culprits are always the instructors/professors who teach courses. Aren't they happy with their salaries? How much royalty do these instructors get from selling $200 textbook to their students? These professors should be ashamed of themselves in involving this scammy behavior, while at the same time these unethical/immoral professors ask their students to sign honor code.

I'm not a professor, just a full time instructor, but my salary is 40% what I'd make in industry. But it's worth it for the great health insurance and 4 months off per year. And for the fact that teaching is what I love. The salary is frankly embarrassing to share with my peers in industry. But not all of us take it out on the students. I find free books whenever I can for my courses. I even write books and let the s…

Are you considering becoming a professor? Salaries for many US colleges and universities are much higher than most think.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#102

Post by AHOHA » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #73

AHOHA wrote: post #70

Almost everything in North America is criminally priced with almost zero regulations, and all political parties are responsible for that: wanna buy a house, enjoy your 70y mortgage, wanna study, enjoy your student loans and expensive textbooks, oh you actually got sick, how rude?? Pay a hefty price or enjoy your 10hrs waiting time in the ER, Restaurants?! Pfft, pay the inflated prices for garbage food and don’t forge…

Gas is insanely cheap in the US compared to almost any other developed country. Food is fairly inexpensive as well. Housing has major problems in part stemming from over-regulation via zoning, NIMBYism, etc.

You might argue that the gas is cheaper, but it isn’t cheap, additionally, when it increases (and it will), US pretty much have no other options except cars.

Food isn’t cheap either and constantly is getting expensive (1), and I’m not even touching the subject of its bad quality.

(1) https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/price-of-food

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#103

Post by nborwankar » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

Meta question - why do we need the latest version of a text book every year. None of the undergraduate fundamental subjects change every year. It’s a racket - problems and some content are modified a bit and moved around making last year’s text book obsolete for page numbers and problem numbers. There really ought to be a set of 100 or so STEM textbooks that cover all the basics and are open source made available freely with source globally. All it will take is one billionaire to decide they want to do this and buy out rights or commision new content.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#104

Post by GartzenDeHaes » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #86

efitz wrote: post #58

States should mandate that public universities use open textbooks. Federal government should make open textbooks, open journals, and FRAND licensing of patents mandatory as a condition of subsidies and other largesse like student loan guarantees.

That’s a good idea, and it should be paired with grants or some other compensation/support for people who develop those open books.

State colleges already receive and enormous amount of public money. For 2024 in Washington State, "For higher education, the budget makes significant investments across the state, totaling $1.2 billion."

https://senatedemocrats.wa.gov/mullet/2023/03/20/senate-intr...

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#105

Post by rocketnasa » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

I propose that students should write the textbooks and pass them on to the next class, who in turn edits and writes more of the same textbook. Using a tool like a Wiki that keeps complete history of every addition, edit, delete to the content of the teaching material. And, of course, with citations and references.

Start with the old textbooks in the school library and teachers editions and give writing assignments for new original writing that becomes the teaching material for the current class and future classes.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#106

Post by rwnspace » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #55

sowbug wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to five-whys this before suggesting a solution. Start by asking whether whoever was in charge of requiring the $250 textbook benefited personally from its purchase.

It's more likely they were lazy and conformed to the status quo. You know, the old never attribute to malice what is easily explained by ignorance.

Depends, I took economics modules at University, and that was the only subject where the mandatory course textbook was co-written by the module leader. Well, co-written is strong: they added ten exercise questions and some call out boxes to the default Pearson textbook. Naturally, it was 40% more expensive.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#107

Post by gnicholas » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #8

Here's a weird idea. Bundle materials into tuition expenses. It incentivizes the right people with the power and market participation to optimize for the right thing. Presumably, teachers and departments would have to justify costs from a materials budget to an admin forcing real downward pressure on the textbook market. The current state of textbooks acts like a surprise fee(dark pattern) where you purchase a produc…

I work in this field, and this is already a thing. It’s somewhat euphemistically called “inclusive textbooks” because the price is already included in your fees. The price is typically significantly lower than you would pay individually because they know that they’re forcing everyone to pay instead of just the subset of students who would choose to pay if given a choice.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#108

Post by aerostable_slug » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

submeta wrote: post #66

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freshman year, first semester, I paid $1100 for books, and then we only actually used one of them more than slightly. I still have them all. One of them was a Discrete Mathematics book that cost $250. We used it twice to do a "reading assignment" and since the class was only taught by the teacher who wanted this book just this one semester, the school store wouldn't buy it back at the end of the semester. It still cr…

I would have gone to the book store, fotographed the two chapters. - When I was a university student, our professor would copy relevant chapters and hand them to us (in Berlin). We would only buy those books we used extensively.

That happens in the Unites States as well, especially when the professor doesn't stand to profit from book sales (and/or the author is long-dead) and the amount of reading is relatively small. I received a number of these kinds of stapled "books" over my undergraduate years. This included some from the author of one of the books in question.

I'm not sure it's fully on the up-and-up given intellectual property laws, but life is full of gray areas. At the time piracy was not the option it is today (no libgen or torrent sites, Usenet wasn't much help, and the web was sparkly-new), so those breaks were very much appreciated — especially for my classes in Attic Greek, where the relevant textbooks were now rare (though once very common) and unlikely to get much use outside of the class. We did have to buy the Loeb editions of a bunch of original texts (Greek on one side, translation on the other), but I have no issue with that, and they were readily available on the used market. I still have them.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#109

Post by IshKebab » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

xur17 wrote: post #97

giantg2 wrote: post #51

Guess what? You do not need to buy textbooks if you have a smart professor that cares and isn't into the racket. You can use 15% of a copyrighted work for educational purposes. That means you can pick and copy chapters from different books to cover the course material. All free!

I wonder if you can use 15% from each "edition" (since they're all basically the same anyways).

No. The law generally doesn't stand for "aha, but what if I ..." tricks.

Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

#110

Post by bredren » Sun, Jun 04, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

polishdude20 wrote: post #53

lordleft wrote: post #3

I think that high textbook prices is one of the many little signals we sent young people, for the last 3-5 decades, that we are not interested in creating a better world for them. Isn’t it interesting how little effort has been invested in mitigating the runaway cost of higher education? That we enabled college administrators to turn up the cost dial without speed bumps? No wonder why young people have become cynical…

Yeah it seems to be a very prevalent thing in the world. We exploit 20 something year olds new found freedom and cashflows. This is the first time they are making money and are looking to be independent and "grown up" or "find themselves" so the market says "hey, I'll help you find yourself if you give me money." Young people have a natural sense of invisibility. "I can do anything I set my mind to" has been burned i…

This is done around all key stages of life where insecurities can be exploited.

The wedding industry from wedding rings to venues, new babies, even interviewing for white collar jobs used to be accompanied with the need for a new suit.

Once it can be established something is important and to be revered, rent seeking knows no bounds.