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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

#31

Post by bequanna »

cde-v wrote: post #15
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…

Sounds like we have to peacefully protest until Citizens United gets overturned so the publishers can't just out lobby/spend us. Then continue peacefully protesting to change the tuition/book cost structure. Totally realistic set of goals, but until then I'll be pirating.

Don't try to externalize blame when it falls squarely on University Executives and Administrators.

Their primary focus seems to be empire building: Create as many admin positions under me in the Org Chart as I can get away with and extract as much money from students as possible to fund the growth of my empire.

This has been allowed to happen because they have essentially unlimited access to funding, no accountability and can make hand wave arguments about needing more staff (DEI, etc.)

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

#33

Post by frob »

When I taught algorithms, I had 2 or 3 textbooks students could buy if they really wanted them, but there was no required textbook. I provided students with detailed slides and lectures notes covering the course material. I would try to find a handful of websites and videos I had vetted covering the topics using the same terminology as we used in class, or with a note explaining the difference.

Not only did it mean students were not stuck with a surprise bill for a book they'd rarely use, but it also meant I had more freedom to teach what and how I wanted. Since I was teaching it with a focus on being a day-to-day developer, I put in my own section on await/async style coding and optimizing chains of dependent asynchronous calls. It was one of my favorite sections as it was exactly the sort of thing I would actually do in my job.

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

#34

Post by roughly »

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…

Yes - why do students feel fine pirating text books? Because it’s blatantly obvious to even the most doe-eyed freshman that they’re being fucked by the textbook company and that the administrators and professors are at best complicit. Welcome to the university, now ignore all that crap on the marketing material and open your wallet - no, the 17th edition of “discrete math” isn’t acceptable, you need the 18th.

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

#35

Post by Aeolun »

jwie wrote: post #25

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…

Why wouldn’t the dean tell them to go pound sand? Does Pearson do anything for the university except extracting money?

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

#36

Post by marcosdumay »

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.

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

#37

Post by sowbug »

watwut wrote: post #30
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…

Wouldn't it be fair use if the class just copied content for those two assignments? It is using only small portion of the whole thing after all.

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.

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

#38

Post by jliptzin »

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…

If only there were more teachers like you and your dad

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

#40

Post by cmurf »

jwie wrote: post #25

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 anything. All books a rented, they all have usage limits, typically some combination of date of expiration as well as number of checkouts - they the library must pay for another license.

It's beyond absurd. I'm not at all sympathetic to this business model. Meanwhile author percentages have gone down.

Digital is dramatically worse, except for the fief holders.

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