High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
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High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
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Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#2https://torrentfreak.com/court-sentences-man-for-selling-pir...
[While this type of activity is clearly illegal, the sentence also has an ironic twist. A quick calculation shows that the fine and confiscated money amount to less than $20 per pirated textbook, meaning that buying them legally would probably have been more expensive.]
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#3I 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: we exploit them at every turn.
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#4Besides bleak job market, horrible healthcare, being potential homeless due to skyhigh housing cost, stark contrast to the boomer's easy life, the more extreme weathers and the climate change, textbook is probably an afterthought. It's not even in top 10 things to worry about
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#5Besides bleak job market, horrible healthcare, being potential homeless due to skyhigh housing cost, stark contrast to the boomer's easy life, the more extreme weathers and the climate change, textbook is probably an afterthought. It's not even in top 10 things to worry about
If a textbook you require for a course can cost up to 500 dollar (not unheard of in e.g. medicine) and you have to buy multiple books in one semester it's no longer an afterthought. What is top ten will always depend on personal situations.
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#6It must have been "acceptable" for a couple of decades. When I was in Uni. almost 20 years ago, we'd all share scanned books between us. Don't think I ever heard "Oh, no thanks - that's illegal"
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#7[deleted]
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#8Here'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 product(education via tuition) and choices are made for you(textbook selection) that you have to pay for in order to pass the class(see the realization of tuition). That's fundamentally broken market mechanics.
The folks in charge of making the market decision(which textbook to use) should be the same ones paying for it. We have a term for this pattern - moral hazard, and we shouldn't be surprised when students continue the same pattern of behavior when the system continues unchanged.
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#9We had paperback editions which were a fraction of the cost of the US editions.
Some years ago, to prevent US students from using these versions, most publishers changed the page numbering, some content and the problem sets.
Re: High prices make textbook ‘piracy’ acceptable to most students
#10Besides bleak job market, horrible healthcare, being potential homeless due to skyhigh housing cost, stark contrast to the boomer's easy life, the more extreme weathers and the climate change, textbook is probably an afterthought. It's not even in top 10 things to worry about
If a textbook you require for a course can cost up to 500 dollar (not unheard of in e.g. medicine) and you have to buy multiple books in one semester it's no longer an afterthought. What is top ten will always depend on personal situations.
I mean in the context of this post, paying for textbook is an afterthought(i.e. pivacy)