I always liked it when my college professors did what this prof has done. It really sucked to spend $100 on a textbook, open it once or twice during the semester, realize you could have gotten through the course without it, and then try to resell the book only to find that it has been superseded by a new edition. College textbooks are a tremendous scam.

Wonderful!!! I hope there are more professors like him! Yeah, college fees are rising.. whats worst is that its the average person.. the middle class who is affected...

Good for him. Textbook companies are wholesale fleecing college kids.

I loved the professors who told us we'd be using a two edition old version of the book, and that you could find them on Amazon and eBay for under $5.

When I teach, I usually don't assign a textbook, I make the text optional, or I assign an old edition of a text that can be had for $5-$10 online. I never really saw the need for textbooks, as I develop my own lectures, exams and materials. That being said, there are always students who insist on having a textbook, so having them as an option is a good idea.

Not a bad idea. Considering UVSC costs about 1600 a semester that probably makes it a pretty cheap school to attended. Just wonder how it stacks up to to its competitors.

Ive had many professors do this as well. I love love love them with undying adoration!!!!!!!

PS You can usually get textbooks at the library through Inter Library Loan. That is what I do. And renew the heck out of them throughout the semester. And when Ive renewed it too much I take it back, ask the librarian to check it back in, and then recheck it back out. Of course the librarian says, "well, Im not supposed to do that...but I will do it this once..." lol

PS Am I the only one who hates it when a professor uses a text book they wrote themselves?

I'm in university right now, and oftentimes professors will assign course packs of scholarly articles or selections from books, which is great since this cuts down on the number of books I have to lug home ... except they're usually bound and published by the university press, which charges outrageous prices. For a pack priced at $90 (for photocopies!) another professor would send to the local copy shop to sell to us for $15.

I really appreciate professors trying to cut on costs for us. I also appreciate professors who assign alternate reading lists for out-of-date editions (even if they're harder to get a hold of, with a diminishing supply) telling us they're the same, just with different page numbers.

The problem of course is a lot of the professors write the damned textbook and get a profit from it. When I was at the community college, I had a few teachers who didn't have a text-book, and it was great. They did their own thing, and I saved money and learned what was intended as the fat was trimmed from the course.

For that matter, why aren't the textbooks in digital .pdf or similar format by now?

This should be a sign to the textbook people to put there stuff out there in digital form and make it cheaper. "Piracy" is likely keeping them from doing so, however, so it'd take some sort of college-wide liscencing scheme or something to goad them into it.

It's ridiculous how thay have to keep coming out with new editions of textbooks every couple of years. Especially for a subject like calculus or something, which DOESN'T CHANGE and hasn't really changed in 200 years. It's nothing but planned obselesence by the publishers so they can squeeze a few more bucks out of you. It's DISGUSTING!

Wow kudos to him, unlike my other former professor who made us pay $50 for a textbook that he wrote that WASN'T EVEN FINISHED and we had limited online access to it for only the semester.

Whenever I taught, which was not that much, there was no text needed. I would make my own problems, do typed handouts stemming from a mix of my old notes,and just write everything out on the white board with subject and topic headers so that a student's notes where a real learning aid.

I taught for profit somewhat but mainly for fun, which is why I believe I did not...

I've had a couple of professors who didn't require texts and assigned online journal articles or gave out hand-outs instead. It was very nice, though I can see why it's not practical for every course.

Kind of related but not: One of my profs has amazing disdain for blue books. She thinks it's ridiculous that some teachers require you to buy special booklets of lined paper when regular old notebook paper would suffice.

Good for him. Before I xfer'd to a college that taught via source material, I HATED spending $100s of books that I either didn't use or were full of misinformation.

Textbook publishing is a SCAM. Just Read 'Lies My Teacher Told Me'

My university (Florida State) was ALWAYS on the bleeding edge of textbook editions. By the time you're through with the class, you can't sell the book back to the store because there's a new edition out that they're using.

Fortunately, a LOT of colleges aren't willing to bite that quickly, and I can sell my books on half.com to their students, who are looking for a steal. I've sold several hundred dollars worth of them, fortunately.

You have to imagine, though, that the classes where you're replacing textbooks with journal articles is probably a rather specialized class, where the book is limited in print already, and the topic deserves a more in-depth discussion than the typical textbook offers. Maybe I'm wrong.

After buying $100+ textbooks for a couple semesters, my 1st question to each prof/TA at the beginning of the semester became, "Do I need this text book?" Will we actually use it? In what way? Some were an obvious, "YES". Others were completely unnecessary, and it was great when the prof was honest about that. I usually made it a point to do it discretely.

Going textbook-free is nice. By this point, these books should either quite affordable because of advances in digital printing, or digital/on-line only. Lets give the trees and printers a break.

If you go to bookstores in countries like The Philippines or Mexico, where the college population doesn't have a lot of money, you'll find the very same textbooks sold in the US but for 10% of the cost. The reason is they print them on much cheaper paper and the whole book is paperbook. Most US college students would be happy to pay $15 for a textbook if the book was in paperback form and didn't have fancy 4 color printing.

I had a professor in a math class (Finite Mathematics) use a wiki-style web page to post problems and have discussions on how to solve them. The main reason I took this class was because there was no textbook... had I taken College Algebra, the text would have been $130 because it was a new edition... I wasn't aware that math changes that much year to year.

I quickly learned to not buy the textbooks until after a couple weeks of class when between the syllabus and the lecture style I could determine if the textbook was actually necessary. The downside to this approach was that by this point getting a used copy if I actually NEEDED a book was not likely. But I think I still made out overall.

The biggest new scam is textbooks that come with CDs and "interactive material", and once you open the cellophane, you can't return it or do anything with the damn thing. Then the profs make you do a couple of *useless* tutorials online, which invalidates the serial number, so everyone has to buy a new textbook every semester, and you can't share with others. Big god damn scam, especially after paying 45000 a year in tution.

I had a few professors who did this (no textbook or "textbook optional") - but they were usually the ones with a freshly minted doctorate (less than 5 years). In other words, they understood the high costs of university education, they hadn't published their work in any kind of textbook format, AND they didn't feel entitled to make a profit off of their students.

Seriously, someone who has been a professor for 20, 30, or even 40 years (yes, I had one that old) has no idea of the costs associated with their student's education - except for a very few who had college-aged kids not going to the same school for free. It's the same as any other middle-aged adult - "I was able to work and put myself through college on minimum wage - why can't you do the same?"

It always depressed me when a pint of plasma got me more than that semester's worth of texts when sold back to the bookstore.

I just went through the process of selecting a new textbook (as part of a committee) for a basic course I teach at a university and found that increasingly there are more and more options for making texts cheaper for students by "customizing" the text. For example, the book we selected we had published loose leaf so students could bring one chapter at a time to class, etc. and also to make it cheaper. You can also choose to have the books done in black & white to cut costs, leave out chapters not required by a department, and even put the book all online to be accessed through Blackboard or another online system. Unfortunately, it seems like the publishers are only willing to do this for large volume orders and classes required of most students at the school. Even more unfortunate is that the publisher won't let our students sell back the loose leaf books in case there are pages missing.

Agreed. My last book was purchased from a company in India.. of course they aren't supposed to sell it to me but so what. It was over 50% less than the comparative US version, it was also in a smaller footprint and paperback which made it lighter. So it cost less, weighed less, and took up less space (length and width anyway).

Why are we forced to pay the United States textbook tax? Seriously... if the book can print in India or wherever the hell they print it and sell for $80 why am I paying $175? Screw them and teachers who require it.

I also had an experience with one of those "course packs". It was $35 for 16 pieces of photocopied paper. Outrageous and made even more so by the fact that the instructor screwed up the course pack and ended up handing out free copies to everyone ANYWAY. Gah!

I agree with the consensus, college textbooks are a ridiculous scam. Unless someone can explain to me why they need a new edition of $100 books every couple years, just to update a few low key phrases and switch a chapter or two around. Ironically enough, I found the most expensive books to be the first couple years, mostly the intro courses.

Even the used textbook stores on campus were making a huge profit, buying books back for (usually, there was the rare exception) like 30% of the cost, and then jacking it up to undercut the cost of the new book.

I had a few professors who made us by course packs instead, but those weren't always cheaper by the time you bought it from the place that copied and bound them. I guess $50 for a course pack is better than $50 a book for 8 books that it took copies from, but still…

The best professor I had actually used some of his grants to buy the books/packs for us. I remember showing up day one to a 200 page bound course pack that would have cost $50+ in the campus store, only to learn it was free. He figured he'd use his grants for something worthwhile, and what more worthwhile than to encourage kids to actually own the materials. The cost was probably about $100 per student per semester, and I couldn't have been more thankful.

If only more professors would follow suit...

My school (DePaul University in Chicago) is on a quarter system. I have to buy books 3 times a year (the summer quarter is optional). I would love to be able to print my own materials or to purchase a edition of a textbook that is a few years old in order to save money.

College textbooks are a total scam!

$900 dollars seems about right although being a business major at my school meant you always had to buy new editions (many of which were written by the professor) so mine never dropped below $825 for the year and ballooned up to around $1600 one year (the cashier actually said that my semester of books at $850 was the most she had ever seen).

It reminds me of a news story I saw once about publishers who basically bribe teachers (they call it a consulting fee) to make their books required for their classes. Apparently there are teachers who feel like education should be reserved for the upper classes.

@AtomikB: You'd think that as long as they're "updating" it, they could improve upon the explanations in the text. Damn calculus.

I work for a college textbook publisher. We're a business like any other, and respond to what our market wants to buy. The unique thing about the textbook market is that it's the instructor who decides what textbook to use in class, but it's the student who has to buy it. The instructor may choose the book he's been using for decades, or the one that comes bundled with the most stuff, or maybe even the one he thinks is the best. We do in fact offer electronic texts, custom texts (just the chapters you need), texts without all the extra stuff bundled, etc., but for any number of reasons your instructor may not be choosing those options. The very best thing a student can do to help is give feedback to the instructor, the department, etc. on your real opinion of the textbook and press them to investigate the alternatives.

I suppose it's a bit different in engineering. I found the texts I saved from undergrad were useful in grad school and when studying for the FE exam, and I still use a number of my textbooks from undergrad and graduate school today as a professional.

With that in mind I didn't protest too much when we had to buy a book that we'd end up keeping long into our careers. A lot of the professors in other disciplines who taught the "Intro to " courses seemed to understand that the books wouldn't be used in our professional lives and the usage of cheap course packs was much more common (and welcome).

@Zonino:

I wasn't aware that math changes that much year to year.

I just graduated from law school and would easily spend over $700 a semester on texts; I swear, they were charging by the pound and intent on permanently impairing my skeletal structure.

Before the days of internet legal research, books of statutes had to be updated regularly as new laws were constantly being made. Publishers updated the statutes by sending out paper pamphlets (not fancy at all) that you would slip into a pocket in the back of the hardbound book. I had a Constitutional Law text that did something very similar - everyone bought a used book that was several years old and the publisher would issue a relatively inexpensive annual supplement pamphlet. This is an environmentally friendly and relatively inexpensive way to update textbooks.

I just finished teaching an upper level biology/biochemistry course at a liberal arts college. For my class I made all assigned reading from NCBI's bookshelf. This resource makes the text of several outstanding books available for free online. It's a great resource. This combined with primary literature also available online made the basis of my entire course. I have yet to see my evaluations, so I'm not sure what the students made of this approach yet. I should say that I did not do this for a cost saving purpose though. I did it because there was not one textbook that would fully serve the purposes of my own course. Thus having access to dozens of first rate textbooks online was great to cover a wider array of topics.

Expensive text books are still excellent references though. I haven't ditched too many of my science books and I enjoy having them. A lot of that information is useful to have in a handy single source.

My favorite was the professors who wrote the textbooks. Captive audience to boost the sales of their own crappy books.
Spend over a grand on books at the beginning of the semester. Sell them for about 60 bucks 4 months later.

I had a teacher (African History) who provided us with xeroxed copies of the chapters he wanted to use from most of the books for the class. Though it wasn't about cost, it was about the fact that the books had been banned from being imported because the CIA objected to the (entirely accurate) descriptions of CIA activities in central Africa during the 60's and 70's.

On a side note, my dad wrote the book for his circuit design class because in order to be tenured you had to publish a book every few years. His was the cheapest circuit design book in the bookstore, because he wasn't interested in making a profit on it. And he gave students extra credit for finding any mistakes in it.

I agree that the cost of textbooks is out-of-line, and a lot of that is due to gouging on the University Bookstores' part. However, to play devil's advocate, often times when professors offer photocopies in the form of "course packs" of articles or sections of books and textbooks, they are doing so against copyright law. At my school, there was a store that specialized in photocopying all of these articles. They got around the copyright law by having the professor provide the materials to them, and then the student would press the "copy" button. Then they would do the binding. Apparently, then they were not at fault.

Quality journal articles and well-written books don't come out of the blue; someone needs to pay for them.

@traezer:
It might be cheaper to keep the book out and pay the late fee if your school is strict about the renewal policy@
stanfrombrooklyn: the International Editions are cheaper on ebay and the like, usually they have a soft cover (which makes them lighter to carry!)@AnitraSmith:
That's true, but I think today's teachers are going to be different in 30 or 40 years. The older profs of today did not spend as much (even adjusted for inflation) as students do now. Hopefully, today's profs will continue to remember the pain.

Textbooks are such a racket. I make barely over $30k and am putting myself through school part-time. It's tough to have books cost almost as much as the course itself. I use amazon as much as possible, but I take a lot of online courses that not only don't have the syllabus available until the day class "starts", but the instructor makes something based on the readings due, like, three days later, so it's nearly impossible to get it used on amazon, even with expedited shipping.

I really appreciate it when teachers try to minimize/eliminate textbook usage. Sometimes the books are necessary and have more & more concise, clear information than you could get by mishmashing stuff. But new editions come out so often that it's just silly. Most teachers try to tell you whether you can buy an older edition, but that information is often only available at the beginning of class, making pre-class bargain buys difficult.

I'm a professor and, yes, textbooks are a scam and I try not to use them. Sometimes it's unavoidable--survey classes, for one, where the material we teach is considered pretty rudimentary and thus only available in textbook form (nobody would publish an academic book or article stating the obvious). Occasionally we have no choice--departments can impose a text to standardize the material covered in large lecture classes with several sections taught by different faculty.

Most faculty hate textbooks. They cost too much, are poorly written, often feature mistakes, and go into new editions way too often. We have nothing to do with their cost.

Textbooks are published by multinational companies to make profit--they are one of the most lucrative forms of publishing and go into new editions because students resell books and the publishers thus have a vested interest in making the texts obsolete (so textbook publishers actually blame students reselling books for their cost). This is another reason why they aren't going to put the content online or reduce prices.

Course packets are great but the reason they cost so much is because of the Kinkos court case in the early 1990s (around copyright infringement, again we're talking publisher royalties). Universities have legal departments that take this seriously, hence most charge so much as they are paying royalties set by publishers to cover their loss of sales income on the excerpts we reprint. Yes some schools do turn a blind eye to this, and thus charge very little. Most don't.

Believe me, it makes teaching difficult. And handing out photocopied material in class (whether funded by a grant or not--not something grants can be given for, by the way) is a violation of copyright law.

When I was an undergrad at Virginia Tech, we were told that it was university policy for all of the professors to incorporate a textbook into the class. Not only that, but that professors were instructed to require students to purchase the appropriate book. It was a scam all around, and several of my professors loudly proclaimed "THE BOOK IS REQUIRED FOR THIS COURSE" while vigorously shaking their heads "NO."

The biggest scam they hit me with was Biology. When I went to sell my book back at the end of Semester 1, they refused to buy it, citing a "new edition" was out. So I threw it in the trash. Next semester, you guessed it... same book, same edition.

I'm intrigued by the idea put forth here by some posters that professors who write textbooks should NOT use their own textbooks for the classes they teach?

Huh?

Would you prefer they use a textbook someone else wrote? What would that say about their knowledge of the subject matter?

Similarly, I guess my local Ford dealer better not drive around in a Ford? Why would someone want to use their own product?

I got rid of the textbook for my class because I learned it was around 70 dollars and it wasn't even a hard cover. There is nothing about it that was necessary for the class to be taught, although it was a good aid.

The textbook racket needs to end. There are plenty of articles on the Internet that can be used.

Here's a question for you: does a professor lose credibility if s/he doesn't use a textbook? I mean part of the reason I used it was to show the students that I wasn't making this stuff up and for them to get another perspective.

My first quarter of college, I was going to a small branch of Ohio State. During the first week of school they had a thing in the cafeteria to boost morale and give away free stuff (yeah!). One of the things they did was find out who had spent the most in text books in the cafeteria and they got something like $100. The winner was a phsych (sp?) student who had spent over $1300.

Also, I've been blessed. Almost all of my family has graduated college and many (including my grandparents) have done so in the last decade, therefore learning the insane prices of text books. In the late 90's my great aunt set up a textbook scholarship from some insurance money. Basically anyone who is biologically from my great grandmother (my mother's mother's mother) qualifies. The downside is, we have to buy the books out of pocket first then go to my great aunt with the receipt and be reimbursed.

What scares me is that the same publishers that are out to "maximize their profits" (or "screw students up the A") on college textbooks are also selling books to the various PTA's out there who buy text books for the K-12 system. If you ever wonder why kids books have lots of pretty pictures, little text, and lots of dubious information - it's because these publishers are making books that are attractive to the members of the PTA, who often have no training in education, and in some cases, are fairly anti-academia. And they use the same pricing structure (ridiculously high). Sure maybe they'll offer a discount, but as Mama Smash always said "50% off of crap means your get twice the crap for the same price, and who needs that much crap." And to those who say, "We are just giving the customer what they want." Umm...no, you are giving the client what they want, you are taking choice away from the customer by not offering alternatives.

I remember those days, both at Wichita State and at The Evergreen State College. What sucked the most was when I would try to go used, and the price gap was so small that it wasn't worth it. And selling the damned things later... hah hah hah.

By the time I hit TESC, if I didn't have to buy the book--libraries are cool--I never did, and still graduated with my BA.

I want to clear something up. I am a college instructor (physics) and a lot of the time we have as much choice as a student over textbooks. The publisher informs us that a new edition is coming out and that we can't use or order previous editions. Over the years instructors have pushed back though. One of the reasons (at least in Physics) you now have textbooks split up into different volumes that you can buy rather than buying the full edition is that instructors asked for that to help relieve the cost burden on the students.

@MorgueReader: Agreed, unless you're a drug dealer; then, it's a really bad idea to use the stuff you sell to others ("Mmmmm... that's gooood cherry cocaine... [sniff]).