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High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students

torrentfreak.com

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

#141

Post by diffeomorphism »

raincom wrote: post #113
diffeomorphism wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, almost never. That is usually forced by the university, publishers and, surprisingly, by the students and their parents: Say the textbook used for the last 5 years costs $300 and now you want to switch to a different, cheaper book. Now you have to convince admin (why switch? The previous one works) and students (I pay $$$ tuition, why are you cheaping out on the book? Is it worse?). > how much royalty do they ge…

I don't need to be ashamed of suggesting that. These professors should be ashamed of themselves for not taking this issue with their administration. If they can't stand for these issues, how can they teach future generations?

I see you have entirely avoided admitting you were wrong, then made up another accusation and climbed on a high horse. You obviously have no interest in solving anything, just in virtue signaling.

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

#142

Post by systems_glitch »

Virginia Military Institute's math department decided they'd solve it by just writing their own open source books:

https://www.vmi.edu/academics/departments/applied-mathematic...

My wife is a professor there and wrote their APEX precalculus book several years ago (why precalculus is needed for college students is another matter). The print price was raised this year but is still well under $20. I think I paid around $350 in 2005 for the text we used for 1205/1206 at VT.

VMI also does outreach to help other schools adopt their books and transition from whatever they'd been using. Excellent use of public funds IMO.

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

#143

Post by monktastic1 »

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…

> 15%tip

You mean 25% tip, minimum -- according to many POSs!

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

#144

Post by mlinksva »

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.

https://sparcopen.org/news/2023/congress-introduces-bill-to-...

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

#145

Post by tenacious_tuna »

sitkack wrote: post #140
andruby wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied a semester abroad (Erasmus) in Portugal and I was so surprised that the expectation there was to get the course book photocopied. The university had a copy room where you pay for a literal copied version of the book that someone made with a xerox machine.

In the 90s in the US, for more hard science and math courses, the course was taught against course notes that you needed to buy from one of the many print shops next to the university. This was spiral bound, often a couple hundred pages and costing 20-40$ because that is how much a short run print job costed. These were made by the instructors. For courses where a book was required, you could check a book out from th…

I graduated from a US university in 2018 and my favorite math course was taught by a professor who told us at the start that the textbook was just his course notes, which he provided a PDF for, and we were welcome to (and encouraged) use the text as open-notes in our exams so long as we had a printed version of the notes.

The class proceeded to be one of my favorite math classes, and it was so incredible to have a text that was deeply integrated to the course--because it was just straight up what he lectured from. I wish more of my courses had been that way.

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

#146

Post by someweirdperson »

chongli wrote: post #41
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…

Most of the professors I've had taught the course entirely with free materials. I think they went out of their way to avoid having students spend money. A top-down policy forcing all students to buy textbooks sounds like a way to take control away from these professors in order to further enrich the school and the publishers at students' expense. I don't view textbook costs as a "dark pattern", they're an honest sign…

> A professor who makes a $250 book mandatory and then barely uses it sends one kind of signal. A professor who goes out of their way to hunt down (or even scan) and provide free PDFs for all required readings sends another.

My memory may be fading away, but what I remember is that many professors provided their lecture in a kind of written form (written by them or their assistants, not copied from books), at cost to copy. No book required in addition.

A lecture that follows a book seems weird. Why a lecture, just read the book?

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

#147

Post by shagie »

ncallaway wrote: post #61
vanilla_nut wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but this feels like it'll cause even more issues. Today, clever students can share books, buy used, share electronic copies, or skip the book entirely if they don't think it's necessary. With this system, every student is forced to buy their textbook indirectly through tuition, which will of course rise significantly based on the cost of a textbook for an average class. It's kind of like m…

That’s the thing, any mandatory costs (textbooks, meal plans, etc) should be bundled into the standard tuition price. It needs to be bundled into the top line price that people are actually aware of when they’re making their “purchase decision” (where to go to college)

That is a report that you can get / ask for - it is known as the cost of attendance. There is still some variation. For example, if you are a local you may not be required to live in the dorms and have a meal plan as a freshman.

Price of Attending an Undergraduate Institution - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cua

(summary per state) https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_330.20.a...

(by year) https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp

It should be made easier to find, but its not particularly hard to find.

https://financialaid.wisc.edu/cost-of-attendance/

> Your cost of attendance (COA) is an ESTIMATE of the expenses you might encounter while attending UW-Madison. Your COA includes more than just tuition and fees – see below. Most programs’ COAs are based on a full-time, nine-month enrollment period, unless otherwise noted. Although the actual cost of attending UW-Madison varies depending on your particular spending habits, the university bases your financial aid on your estimated COA.

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

#148

Post by theoldlove »

electriclove wrote: post #101
beej71 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anyone who is a full-time instructor at a university has a strongly considered becoming a professor, but weren’t able to get that job for whatever reason.

And even if you were a professor, if you’re not bringing big money you’re not earning a great salary either. Go look on Transparent California and see how much tenured faculty at a CSU are making.

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

#149

Post by pradn »

marcosdumay wrote: post #36
Scandiravian wrote: post #11

I studied law for a few years in Denmark and I remember the insane amount of money required to purchase all the books on the curriculum Most of them were written by the professors who taught the course and every year or two, they'd reshuffle the contents of the book to make it harder for students to follow the course by purchasing used copies from the previous year Most of the time only a small part of the books were…

In Brazil the university libraries are expected to make available every book that is necessary for a course. That makes for a lot of very interesting behaviors, like compiling "exercise equivalence tables" between different editions of a book, and students having a culture of self-organizing around the library sharing availability. I believe if I had to buy all the books I used, the cost would be similar to rent.

I've never seen "exercise equivalence tables" in the US - that's a great idea! I suppose if pirated PDFs are accessible, this isn't necessary any more.
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