201–210 of 322 posts
There was a mathematics professor in Canada who wrote what became the standard calculus textbooks used in universities here (the violin ones). Anyways, one day a local paper did a little showcase of the house that textbooks paid for and now that I'm trying to dig up a reference to that article, I find it has its own Wikipedia page! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_House Suffice to say, I, nor anyone else, shoul…
Won’t things like blanket student loan forgiveness or very cheap student loans make such moral hazards even worse? Publishers, college administrators, football coaches, etc. will try to extract as much as possible from the free student loans provided by the government.
I'm surprised that will how many people and institutions should be interested, there aren't more textbooks with a Creative Commons license. For anything non-specialized in a mature field, it doesn't make sense to have so many equivalent options all priced at $150. Calculus is calculus.
There was a mathematics professor in Canada who wrote what became the standard calculus textbooks used in universities here (the violin ones). Anyways, one day a local paper did a little showcase of the house that textbooks paid for and now that I'm trying to dig up a reference to that article, I find it has its own Wikipedia page! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_House Suffice to say, I, nor anyone else, shoul…
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…
> Freshman year, first semester, I paid $1100 for books, and then we only actually used one of them more than slightly. This really bothers me. Universities hold themselves up as virtuous. Then students hire them to provide to provide an education. Instead of being agents for the students, the students are instead treated like a captive market. There is a very real conflict of interest in universities profiting off t…
My state university ethics professor published their own book, and required an extra-credit assignment be turned in from a tear out at the end of the book.
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. This really bothers me. Universities hold themselves up as virtuous. Then students hire them to provide to provide an education. Instead of being agents for the students, the students are instead treated like a captive market. There is a very real conflict of interest in universities profiting off t…
It's complete bullshit You can now comfortably afford to hire a staff of PhD students to tutor you 1on1 in every subject you want to learn more cheaply than going to a university. So where the FUCK is all that money going?
>That pretty much answers the question of why we don’t have teleportation devices or antigravity shoes. Common sense suggests that if you want to maximize scientific creativity, you find some bright people, give them the resources they need to pursue whatever idea comes into their heads, and then leave them alone. Most will turn up nothing, but one or two may well discover something. But if you want to minimize the possibility of unexpected breakthroughs, tell those same people they will receive no resources at all unless they spend the bulk of their time competing against each other to convince you they know in advance what they are going to discover.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declini...
It’s so much worse than you think. Many textbooks come with license keys specifically so you can’t buy used books anymore. Students who do buy a used book are typically coerced into buying the license key to do digital homework, or whatever other reason. When I was teaching during a graduate fellowship I accepted paper assignments for students who bought used books, or who shared books with other students. The Pearso…
I'm not sure the situation calls for such diplomatic language. You are fucking with this company's fief. There, that's what's really going on. They feel entitled to earning money and are pissed they need any customers at all to get it. Public libraries are now paying more money per use for licensing fees than an individual would pay. Libraries are pretty much looking into the abyss, no more permanent copies of anythi…
By the way various feudal privileges were fascinating by the way in how Byzantine and random they were, of course from the modern perspective. At the end even the nobles supporting the Enlightenment were for ending them: some say also because they saw more money in free(r?) enterprise. I kind of doubt we'll live to see similar sentiment in copyright robber barons.
I came to America poor, and went straight to a public university, on scholarship and no money to even pay for food (grad seminars and special events with free sandwiches and pizza is how I learned about things like quaternions as an undergrad). But as an eastern European hacker, i had a complete disregard of copyright, I also grew up in the 90s when hacker ethos included strong anti-authoritarian elements. No way I w…
Oh man, back in my university it was the teachers themselves who provided the pirated materials. In Humanities it was the full scanned books, in STEM at least they always scanned at least the exercises so it wouldn't be necessary to get the specific edition.
Some profs may electronically distribute materials separately, which would likely sidestep both of these costs.
It’s not about being “acceptable” - it’s about it being _necessary_ to afford. Sure, maybe they could go hungry for a few weeks… but this is such a predatory practice that preys on the psychology of student loans. “I’m already paying 60k for tuition… what’s another $800 for 4 books.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
I'd love for this to be a standard across ALL pricing, not just tuition. Any costs that I am required to pay should be put into the base price that is advertised.
E.g. If I shop for plane tickets and I see a flight advertised for, say, 92 EUR I know that the price includes all taxes (sales taxes and airport taxes). Credit-card processing fees are (I think) no longer permitted.
It's not a perfect system - there are still the 'optional' extras (hold-bags, seat-bookings, insurance) extras on top of the price (and sometimes dark patterns to make you pay for them).
In a related matter, in the UK (not sure about the EU) there are advertising regulations which cover 'from' prices. I believe here if you advertise a price as 'from XXX' (e.g. 'flights to Berlin from 50 GBP') then at least 10% of the inventory needs to be available at that price. So no having a single seat on a 150 seat plane available at an artificially low price.