Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="Joobie, post: 1594968, member: 1498"] David, we are pretty much at the mercy of the publishers where textbook pricing is concerned. They have come out with something called "student value editions" of textbooks. These are looseleaf formatted books, which means that we cannot buy them back at the end of the semester. Their claim to fame is that students save money up front, but publishers have really hurt the used book market while guaranteeing that students are forced to buy new books every semester. Custom books are another way that publishers say they are saving students money. Professors work with a publisher to streamline a book to to suit the course. Sometimes it's an old edition of a book with a few chapters removed, but because it's custom & therefore, subject to change, we also do not buy them back. Some students are savvy enough to go ahead & just buy the original book, but most do not & consequently, are spending more than they should. The "open source" books that the university is pushing are both good & bad. Students, in my experience, would much rather have a hard copy of a text. They hard copies are pretty cheap (we are using an open source book for a chemistry course this semester which is FREE online, but a printed copy costs only $55), but these companies are using grant money. Once their funding dries up, costs skyrocket. Bottom line (IMO), professors need to be more conscientious when selecting the course materials they are requiring their students to purchase. They could put much of their material on HUSKY CT, or like many do, have us create a coursepack (we clear the copyright permissions & have the document center on campus print our copies). We only carry books that the professors have requested. Some of them are ridiculously priced (in excess of $300). [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach